


live for tomorrow or yesterday

by gideongriddle



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s03e10-11 The Day of Black Sun, Humor, M/M, Slow Burn, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Title from a Carly Rae Jepsen Song, edge of tomorrow and russian doll i love you i am stealing your content for gay reasons, enemies to idiots to lovers, the mortifying ordeal of being known by the only other person experiencing a time loop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26376715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gideongriddle/pseuds/gideongriddle
Summary: what if we were teens and had been on opposite sides of a war for our entire lives and then right when you decided to defect to my side we both got stuck in a time loop of the day of black sun and discovered we could be powerful allies (and maybe Something More????) and we were both boys :o
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 164
Kudos: 403





	1. HEARTBREAKING: THE WORST PERSON YOU KNOW MADE A GREAT POINT

**Author's Note:**

> title from fake mona lisa by carly rae jepsen, an absolute banger that has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot of this fic

On his sixth consecutive Day of Black Sun, Sokka wakes up mad. 

Whatever spirit has trapped him in a cycle of his own terrible mistakes seems to believe that he will take this punishment lying down. Well, fuck that. Sokka is a planner. Sokka is a fixer. Modern problems require modern solutions.

The sun’s just cresting the horizon and he’s the only one awake (he’s reliving the one day this has ever happened!) and instead of poring over the maps until everyone else rises and shines like he did the first time and every time since, he tiptoes over to where Toph is sleeping. 

Sokka gives her a tentative poke ( _please don’t freak out and throw a rock at him, please, he doesn’t want to restart this day this soon_ ) and Toph doesn’t move. 

Sokka’s about to try poking harder when she hisses, eyes still shut, “What do you want?”

“I need to talk to you and Aang,” he whispers back.

Her eyes open only to squint skeptically in his general direction. “Not Katara?” 

“No,” Sokka replies, involuntarily glancing over to where his sister’s lying. She’s really alive, he reassures his brain. The version of this day where she died was fake. Or it didn’t stick, at least.

“Weird,” Toph says, though she’s clearly delighted. “Okay!”

“Great, but keep your voice —”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, silent and sneaky,” Toph says, not nearly as quietly as Sokka would like. Well, beggars can’t be choosers and Katara still seems fully passed out.

They creep over to Aang, who looks positively angelic sleeping soundly in his bed of koala sheep fur. In any other circumstance, Sokka would feel bad about waking him (maybe so bad he’d change his mind and walk away) but the pessimist part of Sokka’s brain is pretty sure he’s not getting off this hamster wheel any time soon and his actions have, well, diminished consequences. 

He ruthlessly pokes Aang in the arm. 

Aang springs into sitting position like a triggered platypus bear trap. Sokka’s glad he woke up Toph first because when Aang opens his mouth to yell, she’s there to unceremoniously stuff a rock in his mouth and then puts a finger to her lips so he gets the message.

Aang looks positively bewildered but spits the rock out and doesn’t cause further commotion. 

“Hey, guys? What’s going on?” he asks in a hushed voice.

Shit. Sokka probably should have given himself more time to plan out what to say but he’s finding that the inherent time limit on this day is really stifling his ability to strategize the way he likes. 

“Soooooo. I’ve been thinking —”

“Shouldn’t you have been sleeping?” Aang asks, obviously concerned following his own recent adventures in sleep deprivation.

“I mean, I did that, too — thanks, Aang — but what I was thinking about was….our plan?” Big inhale as he tries to figure out how to sell this without giving the game away. “What if we went to find Ozai now?”

“Now? Sokka, the eclipse isn’t for four hours,” Aang cuts in.

“I know! But what if — just a hypothetical — but what if it’s, well, harder to find him than we expect? Like maybe he’s hiding! And if we went now, we would have time to look for him and maybe set up a trap for when the eclipse actually happens. Because you know, it’s a very short window —”

“Why would he be hiding?” Aang asks.

“I don’t know, they’re the Fire Nation! Maybe they’re being extra careful with the royal family —”

“Yeah, right! They’re always having that dumb prince run around after us —” Toph scoffs.

“Yeah, but he’s — Ozai’s probably a different —”

“They don’t know we’re coming,” Aang says. (Spirits above, it _kills_ Sokka not to correct him.)

“And even if we went now, what about the invasion, bird brain?” adds Toph.

“I mean, they would just… keep with the plan —”

“Wouldn’t they worry about us if we went missing?” Aang asks, the crinkle in his brow just going deeper and deeper.

“We could leave a note! Again, the point of this is Ozai —”

“Also I don’t know why you woke me up — Aang’s supposed to kick the Fire Lord’s butt solo,” says Toph, starting to sound genuinely peeved.

“I was thinking the three of us could go on Appa and, I don’t know, _if_ they were, say, hiding behind something metal you could help us break in —”

“Sokka,” Aang says in the voice he usually reserves for animals who are spooked and about to run (too kind, Sokka can hardly bear it). “I know today is scary. I’m nervous, too! But you put together a really good plan for the invasion. We all trust it! And you should, too.”

The thing is, in any other world, Aang would have Sokka dead to rights. Changing ostrich horses mid-stream isn’t Sokka’s style — he only suggests scrapping a well-thought-out plan when he’s really, really nervous and then it’s the kind of thing you _should_ talk him out of. But this is not Normal World. Sokka doesn’t know how to explain what’s really going on — he doesn’t really know himself. He has the shape of it — this day on repeat and only he notices! he keeps getting killed and then just waking up again! it’s all extremely cool! — but not the reason why. And he doesn’t want to sound unhinged.

So Sokka lets out a big breath and hides his frustration and disappointment under a metaphorical rock and says, “You’re right, Aang. Thanks.”

Aang gives him one of his sunshine smiles and then goes in for a hug, while Toph pats Sokka on the arm and mutters, “I’m going back to bed” before walking away. 

“Let’s look over the maps together before everyone else gets up,” suggests Aang, dragging Sokka up, and just like that, they’re going to the spot where Sokka usually sits alone, to do the thing he’s done the five other times he’s lived this day.

Is this the spirits, the universe, the coma that maybe he’s trapped in telling Sokka there’s no point trying to change his circumstances? Well, tough luck, buddy, he’s not giving up. He’ll die at some point today and then he’ll get another shot at this morning and then he’s _going_ to find a way to break out.

* * *

On his sixth consecutive Day of Black Sun, Zuko doesn’t wake up so much as rocket into consciousness with a single thought: _The weirdest (and in the running for worst!) experience of my life is even weirder than I thought_. 

He’d assumed he was going through this — experiencing this horrible, awful, very bad day over and over again — by himself. A reasonable assumption since literally no one he’s interacted with has changed their behavior except in response to his or has had any idea what Zuko was talking about when he’s tried to explain what was happening.

All five loops (that’s what he’s calling them in his head) he’d been throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Yesterday (if you can call it that), he’d barged into the underground chamber where he knew Azula was waiting to surprise the Avatar and he’d accused her of being responsible for this because wouldn’t that be just like her to trap him in a fun-house of his own fuck-ups? But she’d looked baffled to the point of not even being amused by it — she’s a liar but not _that_ good of one (he thinks) — and ordered him to leave. He’d refused and a yelling match had turned into a fight and then right when Zuko was starting to make peace with the fact that he was going to end this cycle getting murdered by his sister (an upgrade or downgrade from being killed by his father?), the Avatar and his friends — the very people Zuko was so eager to ally himself with! who he was _not_ ready to meet yet! — had come through the door. 

After three seconds in which the new arrivals had realized who they were looking for wasn’t there and Zuko had formed the thought _What’s a cool way to tell them I’m Team Avatar now?_ , Azula had sent a lightning bolt Zuko’s way, he had dodged it, and it had gone and struck that annoying Southern Water Tribe boy square in the chest.

As the other boy had hit the floor — dead, very clearly dead — and horror and disbelief had overtaken the Avatar’s face and Zuko had thought despairingly, _Oh, now they’re_ never _going to believe that I’m on their side_ , the Weird Thing had happened. 

Time had shuddered to a stop. 

And then Zuko had heard the sound he’d heard at end of two other loops — this impossibly loud straining, like the bottom of a ship scraping against an iceberg, that suddenly resolved into a pop, like your ears adjusting to new altitude, followed by a quarter of a millisecond where he’d felt like — well, the only way he could describe it is that he’d felt like water going down a drain.

And then he’d been back here. Waking up in his bed, in the palace he was so desperately trying to escape.

He hadn’t died that time. He was positive. The times he’d died, he’d felt the killing blow. (If you were wondering? It felt _bad_.) The freezing, the noises, the down the drain feeling that he couldn’t think about without giving himself goosebumps (ugh) — this only happened to him during loop resets where he’d been in great health. They had bewildered him because he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what was causing the day to restart.

But this time, cause and effect had been crystal clear. That boomerang boy with the goofy smile had died and the day had snapped like a rubber band back to its start. 

Zuko might — just might! — not be in this alone. He’s just maybe-not-alone in this with a person he’s subjected to relentless cruelty over the past year, who seems like he might be aggressively into puns, whose name he doesn’t know. A person whose propensity for dying is keeping Zuko trapped. 

What a cool and normal thing. Thanks, spirits. How do you even talk to a person like that?

That’s a problem for future Zuko. The first hurdle is just getting in front of this guy. 

If he thinks too much about this, he’ll chicken out. 

Zuko books it to the armory, keeping his fingers fervently crossed that there will be some normal soldier armor lying around (that’s probably not what it's called — is he out of touch?). He’s got to blend in so he can hitch a ride to the beach. 

* * *

Sokka knows he isn’t doing a good job, but it's like he can’t stop himself. I mean, he does the necessary things — the things he’d figured out over the last five versions of this day that keep more people alive, like checking the submarine on Boat 4 for leaks _before_ they set sail, and the things that that keep him from looking tragically uncool, like freaking out in front of the Boulder — but the vibes he’s exuding are positively rancid. 

He accosts Huu and demands to know what he means when he says death is an illusion and makes everyone uncomfortable (also gets _no_ answers). He gives his speech to the troops and people who looked confident before Sokka started talking are looking confused and disheartened by the time he wanders off the stone stage. He can’t look Katara or his dad in the eye because the only way he knows how to protect them is by doing what he did yesterday (more accurate to call it the last today?) — keep them out of the battle entirely by discreetly knocking Katara unconscious right before the boats load up, pretending she’d passed out because she was sick, guilt-tripping Hakoda into staying behind to take care of her, and sailing off without them. (All of which had felt bad, been difficult, and had proven to be a real they’re-safe-but-at-what-cost with regards to the invasion’s success.)

If everything would just pause for a second and he could _think_ , Sokka would be able to come up with a better plan — he’s sure of it. 

But here they are. The cycle of this day is an irresistible force and Sokka is an all too moveable object. 

Everyone’s loading up and instead of being in the middle of it all, he’s gone and found a quiet little bit of cliffside to what? Mope on? Tear his hair out on? Look at these spirits-forsaken maps one more time, like they have the answer to escaping this day written on them in code?

“Everything alright?” 

Sokka turns to see his dad, looking uncharacteristically — well, Sokka’s not quite sure what Hakoda’s look means. He glances away, just in case it turns out to be disappointment.

“Yeah,” Sokka makes himself say. “Just, you know, polishing my boomerang, thinking about the invasion!” He reaches over his shoulder to grab said boomerang and realizes he doesn’t even have it with him — it’s in his bag on the beach. Perfect. Now it just sounds like a euphemism. 

“Oh! Well.” Hakoda seems to search for something — a word, maybe — and then sighs. “I know that this is hard —”

It’s such simple bait but Sokka takes it. 

“It _is_ hard! It’s, like, impossibly hard!” Sokka hates that his voice is cracking but he stubbornly keeps going. “I’m just — I’m _just_ trying to keep everyone safe and no one’s listening to me, everyone’s like, ‘We gotta get on the boats, we have to stay to the time table —’”

“Sokka, we’re following your plan,” Hakoda points out gently.

“Yeah, but not the —!” 

Fuck! He can’t tell his dad he tried to get Aang and Toph to run away this morning the same way he can’t tell his dad that he’s cursed or hallucinating or maybe he died five days ago and he’s getting some kind of ghost punishment. Which would be worse to see on Hakoda’s face in response — pity or fear? Sokka literally cannot handle either at this point. 

Pack all the ugly and wild feelings up and shove them down to the bottom of the knapsack. Figure this out on your own without getting everyone else worried and also killed.

“We _are_ using my plan, I just…” Sokka deflates like a war balloon. “You know… what if I come up with a better plan but everyone’s already too committed to this one and… and not changing tactics messes everything up?” Under his breath, he adds, “I’m already messing things up.”

Sokka turns away and looks out at the ocean without really seeing anything. After a moment, he feels a broad hand settle on one shoulder. 

“Part of being a warrior — and being a leader, like you are, Sokka — is making mistakes. I’ve made plenty before and —” Hakoda gives a huff of a laugh. “ — I’ll make plenty more in the future. What’s important is not being afraid to own your mistakes when they happen _and_ making sure you don’t get so caught up feeling bad about them that you can’t help fix them.” 

Sokka stares out at the surf. It’s good advice, but he’s not sure how to apply it to his particular situation. 

“Is that… is that helpful?” his dad asks, after a moment.

Sokka finally turns his head and sees something like nervousness on Hakoda’s face. He shocks himself by saying the true thing: “I don’t know. But I’m gonna try to figure it out.”

Hakoda pulls him into a side hug and they stand there, looking out at the water they’ll be crossing soon. 

“I love you, Dad,” Sokka says out loud, and in his head, he adds, _I’ve saved your life one time and I’m going to do it again._

* * *

Riding in a tank is a loud, uncomfortable, aggressive way to travel that Zuko cannot in any way recommend. That boy better be on that beach.

* * *

The subs don’t sink. The sub that gets harpooned by Fire Nation chains is rescued by Katara and Appa. They land on the beaches and this time, Sokka knows where not to stand if he wants to avoid getting taken out by a missile. 

It’s the question of his dad’s survival that has Sokka’s heartbeat rattling his rib cage now. The whole voyage to the beach, he’s been trying to replay the past versions of the invasion in his head to prepare but it’s hard. The two times Hakoda’s gone down, it’s been when they’ve engaged the komodo rhino riders but Sokka’s never seen who kills his dad — he’s always been too caught up in combat himself. The timing of when it happens is hard to suss out — the battle’s always fucking _loud_ — and it feels like the moment of seeing Hakoda still on the ground, (the darkening ground, and above him, Katara and a look on her face he’s seen once before) is writing over the memories of everything that leads up to it. Which makes solving this particularly, um, challenging. 

_I work best under pressure_ , Sokka says to himself, absolutely unsure whether this is true or not.

His mouth is drier than the Si Wong Desert.

The Water Tribe warriors and Earth Kingdom tanks surge forward, skirting the flaming rocks raining down. Those piece-of-shit Fire Nation tanks start pouring out of the gate in front of them and coming up the beach to attack the rear. Sokka takes his eyes off his dad for one (1) millisecond to watch the swampbenders start demolishing them. (It’s a very satisfying millisecond.)

Then it’s back to Hakoda, who is leading the charge. All Sokka can do is follow.

* * *

Okay, so Zuko did lie to be able to get a ride in a tank down to the beach and the lie was that he knew how to be a gunner. This is a lie that is falling apart right now, in real time, as the tank approaches enemy combatants and Zuko, up in the gunner’s seat, does absolutely nothing of use. 

Two things about this: first of all, Zuko isn’t going to fire upon the invasion force because these are the people he’s trying to join. Second of all, he couldn't even if he wanted to — all of the little windows to firebend out of were closed when he got in his seat and he can’t figure out how to open them because none of the levers in front of him are labeled clearly _at all_. 

The soldiers below him are yelling about his idiocy and Zuko’s halfway through the thought of _Wow, one more reason to defect from the Fire Nation — absolutely shit, non-intuitive design!_ when oh, fuck, oh Agni, they’ve been hit by something and they’re spinning and Zuko’s energy is now devoted to not throwing up and the realization that’s he’s going to die in this garbage can if he doesn’t get out _now_.

They collide into something — which, cool, he hits the dashboard and now some part of his face is bleeding but at least they’re not spinning anymore — and Zuko hits every single lever and button until finally, a hatch opens and he scrambles up and out and tumbles to the ground. 

As Zuko struggles to his feet, the tank he was just a(n incompetent) crew member of gets chucked into the ocean by some very, um, minimally dressed waterbenders with big leaves on their heads. Which — aren’t both the Water Tribes from the poles? Where it’s cold? Is this, like, some summer vacation/invasion look they invented? Or is what he’s seeing just the product of the concussion Zuko absolutely just got? 

Hard to know and ultimately pointless. Zuko doesn’t see who he’s looking for among them. He throws off his helmet, wipes the blood from his face as best he can (ugh, the cut’s on his unscarred brow so it’s just going to keep bleeding and bleeding), and runs aimlessly into the fray. 

* * *

The komodo rhinos are bearing down on them and Sokka’s on the outside of the warrior line. What did he do when he did this before? Just engage with whatever rider came up to him, he guesses? (He was so scared in the first version of this day, it was all instinct, absolutely no brain.) What did Piandao say he was good at? Creativity. Use the terrain. The terrain’s not just the concrete beneath his feet — the terrain’s also the komodo rhinos. 

Thinking just enough to figure out the timing but not enough to doubt himself, Sokka darts in front of his dad and all the other Water Tribe warriors and leaps directly onto the foremost horn of the foremost rider’s rhino. La’s fins, this could have gone spectacularly badly but it _doesn’t_ — he hops from the front horn to one of the shorter ones behind it, pirouettes to face the rider with his sword sweeping upwards, to knock the guy’s spear away when instead — holy shit. The Fire Nation’s soldier’s spear is butter and the space sword is apparently a very hot knife — it cuts the spearpoint and wooden shaft in half so quickly Sokka doesn’t even feel any resistance in his upswing. There’s shock from both parties at this turn of events, but in the blink of an eye, Sokka snaps back into action, unseating the rider and swinging into the saddle himself. Wow wow wow, so _this_ is what good adrenaline feels like — he was honestly starting to forget. 

Sokka looks down from his new and improved perch and for the first time he sees it — a firebender running up to Hakoda, who has his back turned. _No no no fuck no_ — 

“Dad, look out!” 

Hakoda turns towards Sokka’s voice and gets his shield up just in time to catch the blast of fire that killed him twice before, then pivots to dispatch four Fire Nation soldiers in six moves. 

His dad’s not dead. His dad’s still standing. His dad’s not just doing okay — he’s doing _great_. 

“I did it, I did it, I did it,” Sokka whispers wonderingly, a smile entirely inappropriate for battle lighting up his face. He digs his heels into the side of his komodo rhino (it _is_ his now, Sokka decides — this bad boy’s way too cool to give up) and his mount charges forward. 

Hakoda clocks their approach and grabs Sokka’s proffered hand with ease, swinging up into the saddle behind his son. Sokka’s about to turn back to ask his dad where he should direct their ride when the komodo rhino skitters to a halt. 

What now? Oh, a Fire Nation soldier who apparently has nothing left to lose has run directly into their path. Jeez, this guy looks like shit — there’s a cut above one eye that’s bleeding like a stuck pig deer and the other side — oh, fuck.

* * *

The boy that is ruining Zuko’s life (no, that’s not a fair assignment of blame, yes it is) is on a komodo rhino, right in front of him and Zuko has no idea what to say. Zuko didn’t think that — well, you could stop the sentence right there, couldn’t you? Zuko didn’t think. He just ran into a warzone to find a person who probably hates him and doesn’t even realize there’s a time loop because if he did he’d probably try to stop dying, right?

 _This was such a stupid idea_ , Zuko thinks as he stands in front of an enormous angry animal with his arms spread wide so it doesn’t try to run around him, intermittently wiping blood from his face. _I don’t even know his name._

“You!” yells the boy, pointing at Zuko with an expression of pure disbelief.

“ _You!_ ” responds Zuko indignantly, pointing back. 

There’s a brief stalemate, as the boy with the — well, Zuko had assumed he’d see a boomerang in his hand, but it’s actually a sword with a black blade??? which, interesting — seems increasingly baffled and frustrated.

A missile hits the ground nearby and they both flinch and that’s right, they’re still on a battlefield and time is limited and Zuko has to say _something_ —

* * *

WHY IS THE FUCKING PRINCE OF THE FUCKING FIRE NATION HERE, CAN SOKKA HAVE ONE NICE THing now, wait, _how_ is he here, Sokka’s never seen him on the battlefield before and he’s done this five times, well maybe four times that you can count, but the only place he’s ever seen Zuko was yesterday when Sokka got to Azula’s chamber in the bunker below the city and she and him were fighting and, wait, that hadn’t happened the first time he lived this day so what —

* * *

“You have to stop dying!” is what comes out of Zuko’s mouth. Well, it’s inelegant but accurate.

“Excuse me???” yells back the Water Tribe boy, the multiple question marks audible.

“You’re screwing this up for me!” replies Zuko. “Every time you die, the day resets and if you haven’t noticed —” he gestures around them “— this day sucks!”

“Sokka, what’s going on?” asks the man behind the boy who is apparently named Sokka. 

“I’ll explain in a — one second, just please trust me, Dad” replies Sokka (Zuko is furiously committing this name to memory), sotto voce. He then executes a frankly unfairly cool move — he stands up in the saddle, runs down the komodo rhino’s forehead, slides down the ramp of its biggest horn, catches air, and then lands in a crouch a few feet away, his sword extended toward Zuko.

 _Show-off_ , thinks Zuko weakly. 

“Did you do this?” asks Sokka, before correcting himself. “You _did_ , didn’t you? I mean how else would you — fucking unbelievable! You’re — what? You’re so bad at catching the Avatar you had to figure out a way to give yourself infinity chances?” 

“What? No! I’m trying to join _your_ side!”

“Do you think I’m _stupid_?!”

“I mean — I don’t know you that well! But it’s the truth!” There’s not _not_ little flames coming out of Zuko’s nostrils as he vents his frustration. “I’m trying to be _good_ and _helpful_ and I’m trying to get away from here but every time I get close, the day just restarts and I assume it’s because —”

“Oh, you — well, you know what you do when you _assume_! You make an ass of you and —”

“Well, it happened last time! I was about to defeat Azula —” Oh jeez, that’s an embarrassing lie that he didn’t mean to tell. “— when you barged in and got yourself killed and the whole room —” Zuko makes a popping sound and then raises one hand slowly, so as not to provoke an attack from Sokka, and gestures to indicate water going down a drain. 

Sokka startles and really makes eye contact for the first time. His gaze is blue and unforgiving.

“It’s happened to you, too,” Zuko breathes.

“Once,” Sokka agrees. “The second time, I think? I —” Suddenly, his face closes off. “You can’t trick me. You’re a lying, murderous little —” He can’t seem to decide on a word to finish the sentence. “You’d say anything —”

“Yes! You’re right, I would’ve. But I’m —” Spirits above, why had he not tried to write out any of this in advance? “Look. I don’t deserve your trust — I’ll probably never earn it! But that doesn’t change the circumstance —”

“How many times has it been for you?”

“Six.”

“Fuck!” Sokka looks like there are a million different things he wants to say and he doesn’t know where to start. “I can’t believe this is —”

“That guy bothering you?” yells a gruff voice in the melee. 

Zuko and Sokka both turn to look at the speaker, a shirtless, extremely jacked earthbender. 

“I —” Sokka looks back and forth between the earthbender and Zuko. He seems extremely torn. He’s also maybe blushing?

“The Boulder will take care of it!” exclaims the earthbender who is apparently named the Boulder and has clearly taken Sokka’s hesitation for assent.

WHAM — Zuko’s obliterated by two tons of limestone. 

Well, it’s one way to end a conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes if you imagined sokka sliding down the komodo rhino’s horn like legolas riding the oliphaunt’s trunk to the ground you imagined it right
> 
> big ups to the atla fandom wiki fauna page for confirming that hamsters exist in this universe and the slang in the world of avatar page for telling me what alternatives to curse words i could use. caroline, you are my continuity queen and obviously i owe you my life. the zukka fandom has some of the funniest and most accomplished writers i’ve ever encountered and it’s an honor just to play in the same sandbox as y’all
> 
> i am a little gremlin and you can find me on tumblr @ gideongriddle


	2. THEY HAD US IN THE FIRST HALF, NOT GONNA LIE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the beginning of the very worst day

On his first loop (before he knew it was a loop), Sokka had woken up tired and woken up first. 

He didn’t remember any specific dreams but there was a buzz in his bones that made him sure he’d had them, alright. Maybe they weren’t full-blown night terrors but they’d probably been shitty in small ways — like maybe he was trying to carry a bunch of swords at once (unclear reason) and then dropped them in front of all the Kyoshi Warriors (why were they there??) and had to pick up the weapons one by one amidst their laughter (Suki’s loudest of all). Yeah, probably something like that. Ugh, he needed to focus. 

Everyone else in their little group was still conked out, so as the sun rose, Sokka looked over the maps and he was still sitting there, trying to cram more information into his overstuffed brain, when Katara came over and pressed a cup of tea into his hands. It felt good. Warm. He hadn’t realized his fingers had gotten cold. He also hadn’t realized other people were up and about. Shoot, he had to be more aware of his surroundings.

Aang and Toph seemed to have a level of energy that Sokka was afraid he wouldn’t be able to match but then Katara pointed out the fog that turned out to be their fleet coming in and just like that — boom, the wind was back in his sails (ha ha). Everyone rushed down to meet the ships and for the two minutes it took for Toph and Aang to fly them down the cliffside on boulders and for him and Katara to run down the newly earthbent pier, Sokka let himself just be excited about seeing his dad. It felt great. 

Katara made it to Hakoda first and went in for a tight hug, while Sokka jogged up and asked the question that had had him on pins and needles all morning: “Were you able to locate everyone I told you to find?” 

(He hoped his dad couldn’t hear the crossed fingers in his voice.) 

“I did,” replied Hakoda over Katara’s head. “But I’m a little worried, Sokka. Some of these men aren’t exactly the warrior type.”

As if on cue, swampbenders began disembarking. Yeah, he had kind of forgotten how... much they were and how little they wore, but he knew they’d be helpful. I mean, Huu was musing aloud about the inherently illusory nature of both pants and death — that was helpful philosophically, right?

Passengers from other ships streamed out and Sokka let himself have one (1) moment of pride as he watched Katara reunite with Haru, Tyro and Haru’s mustache and Toph with the Hippo and the Boulder. Which, speaking of — the Boulder of kickstarting-Sokka’s-bi-realization fame was there, live and in-person, and had talked to his dad??? Should Sokka say something? Thank him for the profound but unintentional positive effect he’d had on Sokka’s life? No, that would be weird — spirits, _focus_! He needed to focus on the fact that he had put together a good list of people and they’d actually come.

The sound of an explosion in the boat behind him threatened to deflate Sokka’s hastily acquired self-confidence but then it turned out that it was just Teo and his father who — oh jeez, Sokka wasn’t sure he ever asked that mechanist’s name and now too much time had passed, it’d be too awkward to ask — was just experimenting with — 

“You’re making peanut sauce bombs?” Sokka asked, half disbelief, half delight.

The answer was yes, but even better — his super secret plans for underwater transport had come to fruition. 

Okay, honestly? He had put together a terrific list of people. Sokka looked at all the adults and friends surrounding him and tried to turn his anxiety down to a low hum by focusing on the preparation he had left to do. 

They were _going_ to win. They had to.

* * *

On the first loop (before he even knew loops were possible), Zuko hadn’t so much woken up as had his brain suddenly turn back on. 

Not shockingly, planning out a confrontation with his father all yesterday evening had not made for a, uh, traditionally restful night — he’d basically just laid in bed ramrod straight, radiating stress, until his brain powered off. But now it was back in action, forcing him to stare his life directly in the face. A life he was saying goodbye to permanently in about three hours. 

Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth.

He couldn’t quite make himself give up the comfort of the bed yet (because of the way it meant committing to an absolutely terrifying course of action), so instead Zuko listened to the muffled patter of the few remaining palace staff hurrying up and down the hallway outside his bedroom. Presumably they were making sure the bunker below was stocked with all the necessary luxuries. Nevermind that no one was intending to be down there for more than twenty-four hours. His father could never endure even a whisper of deprivation.

Someone gave a timid knock on his door. Oh, that’s right, they were going to want to armor him up, on the presumption that he’d be involved in defending against the invasion. Why confuse or alarm the staff by declining? They were just trying to do their job and avoid royal wrath. 

“Come in,” he said and they did and he let himself turn into a prince for what he thought would be the second to last time.

* * *

For a day where he knew every moment counted, it was remarkable how time slipped away from Sokka over the course of the morning. There was the business of actually seeing the submarines up close, of making sure an Earth Kingdom tank was stowed safely inside each, confirming who was on what strike team, establishing what the chain of command in the field will be with the leader of every boat crew (Hakoda, obviously, was the number one shot-caller), making and doling out a truly insane number of cups of tea to the gathered warriors — it was such an overload that Sokka stopped being a person capable of getting anxious about things that were to come. He was just a body in motion, simultaneously in charge and at everyone’s beck and call.

The big speech he was supposed to give snuck up on him — one moment he was running over the cargo of every ship in his head and the next, everyone was actually seated and quieted down and his dad was looking at him expectantly and oh, it was happening _now_. He had bolted up and jogged halfway to the little stone stage Toph or Aang must have created at some point (another thing he missed in the hubbub) then realized he'd forgotten his maps. Jeez, he _had_ to pay better attention! (He would, he would.) He circled back real quick to grab the scrolls, and something about getting those extra fifteen seconds to compose himself and the confidence and warmth he saw on Hakoda and Katara’s faces steadied him and made the whole thing seem bearable. 

He didn’t hurry back to the stage — he took a comfortable pace and shot a self-deprecating grin out to all these people sitting on the ground waiting for him to speak and they sent a little good-humored laughter back. They didn’t hate him. They didn’t want him to fail. Huge win, to be honest. 

Sokka climbed the stairs and he didn’t trip. 

As for what he said once he was standing at the top? Beats him. He basically blacked out up there but his hands kept flipping maps and pointing to things and his mouth kept moving and the two times he took a half second glance to his right, he didn’t see alarm on the faces of his friends and family, so he just hoped he’d more or less given the speech he memorized. He got to the end. A few people asked questions — including the Boulder! Sokka was able to answer them. He wasn’t sure what he was doing counted as rallying the troops — he kept things pretty technical — but when no one was raising their hands any more, he hit them with an “Okay!! Um, let’s do this!” and people clapped and there was at least one whoop from Toph’s direction and Sokka was happy to take that without complaint.

Then everyone started moving simultaneously, strapping on armor, sliding on helmets, and what they were about to do became immediate in a whole new way. They were really invading the Fire Nation. Today. 

He joined the rush of people getting ready and when the boats began loading, Sokka was the first one on board.

* * *

As soon as the servants left (meekly, eyes averted — how had he not felt weird about that before? their implicit fear seemed so clear now), Zuko let his princehood slip right off his shoulders. Literally and figuratively — he took his hair back down and slipped the armor off, but mostly it was the posture. The space he took up, or didn’t. He wondered if he looked more like a boy or a man to everyone else. He certainly felt more like the former.

He had to write Mai before he disappeared off the map.

He sat down at his desk, picked up his brush, and came to a full stop.

What the fuck was he going to say? “Sorry for dipping with no notice”? “Sorry for making you treason-adjacent”? “Sorry for being a bad friend and a worse boyfriend?” No. Stupid. Speaking of — did he need to acknowledge that this was a break-up or was that implied? It had to be ruder to write the letter as if they were just friends, right? What if he just put “It’s not you, it’s my need to to confront my family’s legacy of violence...” 

He wished he could just front-load the whole thing with compliments to make the letter less unrelentingly awful but Mai would hate him sugarcoating even more. 

Ugh, it felt so wrong. 

Well, not quite. It felt bad and hard and frustrating, but that didn’t mean it felt _incorrect_. It had been a long time since what was right had felt so unambiguous, actually. 

He had to do this, so he would. He put ink to paper. 

* * *

The ships sliced through the water toward the Great Gates of Azulon. _We’ll either have to use the subs or we won’t_ , Sokka told himself, as this was a particularly insightful or calming thought. He didn’t want to use them because what if they fucked up? He wanted to use them to prove that he had had a really good idea. He mostly wished for the former.

But the latter wish was the one that came true, of course. A bell started clanging as they closed in on what was really one of the world’s tackiest statues and then — oh, whoa, the Gates turned out to be, uh, enormous fiery fishing nets and that meant it was go-time for the sleek little vessels waiting in their ship’s hull. 

“Let’s hope your invention works,” his dad said warmly as everyone rushed below decks. Sokka tried to hide the fact that he was wiping his sweaty palms off on his pants and let Hakoda go down the stairs first. He knew his dad meant well — was being incredibly supportive overall! — but the part of Sokka that always wished for too much whispered, _Why couldn’t he have said, “I_ know _your invention will work” instead?_ He had no answer. He tried to stuff that thought in a dark little box and followed everyone down.

It was weird getting in a little underwater boat when they were already in a big on-top-of-the-water boat. (Sokka couldn’t think of anything that it was like, exactly, but wouldn’t it be funny — and maybe delicious! — to do something like that with food? Like roasting an arctic hen inside a goose or something? Was that anything? Oh, he was purposely distracting himself because he was nervous.) It was even weirder to feel the drop and then the pressure change as the hatch in the ship’s hull opened and the sub slid its way into open water. 

They seemed to be in motion. Sokka locked eyes with Katara on the assumption that she’d be the first one to notice if the sub was leaking. She gave him a small smile back. They seemed to be waterproof. 

So many other people would have taken this win. Would have looked forward, fixed their eyes on the next challenge. But Sokka always liked his turtle-ducks in a row (more birds to maybe add to his food thing??). He directed his gaze out the windows of the sub to see how everyone else was faring and so he saw it all happen. 

The submarine along their starboard side, the one coming out of Boat 4, seemed to be moving slower than everyone else — which didn’t make sense, since it had the same number of waterbenders to power it as everyone else. But those waterbenders were focused on something other than forward motion, Sokka quickly realized. 

A seam in the metal of their hull looked wrong somehow — oh, because _light_ was coming through it into the dark water, which — shit — meant there was a rip in the hull that went all the way to the interior, which mean a leak bad enough that the waterbenders on board were probably putting all their energy into keeping the ocean from rushing in. 

“Katara?” Sokka called out. 

She clearly caught the thread of fear in his voice, because she immediately left her waterbending position next to Huu and ran over to where Sokka was looking out the largest windows. 

The sub next to them was descending now, quicker than Sokka thought possible — were they fighting multiple leaks? The mechanist had included three compartments in the bottom of every sub that could fill with water in an emergency without flooding the part with, you know, people in it but maybe three wasn’t enough? Or maybe the leak was in the main compartment, in which case those extra ones couldn’t help them at all —

It was dropping so far below their sub it was hard to see now — they weren’t supposed to go that deep, the water pressure — was Aang seeing this? There was no fucking way to contact him and Sokka wasn’t even sure Appa could go much deeper then he already was —

Sokka looked at his sister, who looked so young suddenly — how unfair that he was having to ask her to try to save people’s lives that _he’d_ endangered with these stupid contraptions but what other options did they have?

“Can you keep them from going lower — I don’t know, create a current?”

“I can try, Sokka,” she replied steadily, despite looking scared shitless. “It’s harder the farther they get —”

“Dad, we’ve got to stop — Huu, can you hold us in one place?” Sokka yelled as authoritatively as he could. _Thank you, voice, for not cracking just this once_ —

“What’s going on?” replied Hakoda from the front of their sub. “Is there a —”

A sound. A metallic snap. And then a soft implosion. 

“Shit, shit, shit —” That meant the sub had been crushed by the sheer pressure of the water all around them, which meant all the lungs of every warrior on board had collapsed the instant they’d all heard the boom — they were all —

Sokka was very cold all of a sudden and he was also sitting now? On the wooden floor of the submarine he’d dreamed up that had just killed people, allies and friends and — he didn’t remember sitting, had he fallen or had someone helped him down? His heart felt like it was going slower than normal and his extremities were going numb — 

He lost time, maybe a few seconds and then his dad was there, a hand cupping his neck, asking him to look up, please, and Sokka thought he could hear himself talking, repeating something over and over, but he had no idea what he was saying —

Katara wasn’t there anymore and they were moving so she was –– she must have gone back to — but was she okay —

A pounding in his head and a popping in his ears —

Oh, they’d crested the surface of the water and were bobbing now, unfiltered sunlight coming through the windows and they were opening the hatch so fresh air could get in — that’s right, the plan was to surface midway between the Gates and the beach — the _plan_ —

Sokka came back to his body with a huge intake of breath. Toph, who was inexplicably sitting next to him — when had she gotten there? — turned her head in his direction, an expression equal parts queasy and concerned on her face.

“You okay?” she asked. 

“Are _you_?” Sokka asked. “You look —”

“Like shit? Well, the fact that you’re hanging out with the girl who spent the last fifteen minutes vomiting non-stop suggests you’re not looking so hot either, buddy.” Toph opened her mouth as she might follow this statement with a joke, but then seemed to think better of it and fell silent. 

He had to ask the question. 

“We really lost them?”

Toph sighed and nodded, then jutted her chin up toward the open hatch. “Aang and Katara and your dad are up there talking about what to do next.” 

“We should join —” Sokka moved to get up, but Toph put a small but firm hand on his forearm to stop him. 

“I told ‘em we both could use a second to rest.”

That ‘we’ was doing a lot of work. Toph still looked a little green but there was very little she couldn’t rally from — if she wanted to be up there, talking strategy and — fuck! — _saying goodbye to Aang_ , who was about to have to go fight Ozai after seeing —

Sokka had fucked up everything so badly. He just wanted another shot at this — he could have saved those people if he’d known —

“Hey.” Toph flicked his arm. 

“Ow! What?”

“Your heartbeat sped up. Don’t freak out again.” 

Had she ever looked this solemn, this grimly determined before? Maybe, but she shouldn’t have. _She’s so young, they’re all so young_ , Sokka kept thinking, like it was a revelation.

“You can freak out later. But let’s finish the whole invasion thing first, yeah?” 

He exhaled. If they didn’t go through with the invasion, all those deaths were wasted, right? Sokka forced himself to nod.

“If you just fucking nodded instead of saying ‘yes’, I am going to —”

Helplessly, a little hollowly, he laughed. “Sorry! Yes! Yes. Let’s defeat the Fire Lord and then, spirits, let’s freak the fuck out.”

* * *

But, of course, in a few hours, Sokka wouldn’t be celebrating a victory or honoring those they’d lost — he would be dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EVERYBODY SAY THANK YOU TO CAROLINE FOR BEING AN EXTREMELY PATIENT EDITOR AND READER
> 
> i learned a little too much about how submarines sink while writing this chapter, lads, so although i’ve got nothing but respect for sokka’s inventions i’m team toph here — never in my life do i want to go into one of those underwater death tubes!! 
> 
> i am STILL a little gremlin and you can find me on tumblr @ gideongriddle


	3. “I’VE CONNECTED THE TWO DOTS.” “YOU DIDN’T CONNECT SHIT.” “I’VE CONNECTED THEM.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> loop 7: conversations over breakfast, some light ferris buellering, showing up uninvited at your frenemy's house, appa-loving hours

On his seventh consecutive Day of Black Sun, Sokka jerks awake on the dewy ground of an island off the coast near Caldera City. What else is new. 

Okay, so Zuko’s plan is to kidnap Aang. It always is, right? I mean, he’d said it wasn’t — but Zuko says all kinds of things, he’d admitted as much. Now how does Sokka reliving this day help Zuko achieve his goal? Absolutely no fucking clue. Well, maybe Sokka wasn’t supposed to be aware of the repeats. Zuko’s not the most — I mean, if someone was going to mess up an ancient ritual to control time, it’d be Zuko, wouldn’t it? Speaking of, what do you even call this — timebending? What element is _that_? If it’s somehow related to fire — Sokka can’t see how — would Zuko be stupid enough to try and perform a brand new form of bending on himself for the first time in the middle of an invasion of his own homeland? 

Yes. Yes, of course, Zuko is astonishingly stupid. 

Okay, but if he did that — bent time to try and capture the Avatar and regain his honor or whatever — why tell _Sokka_ about it? No sensible person would, right? He’d have seen Aang — and Toph and Sokka — in Azula’s chamber two cycles ago and surely he could have just laid a trap there, instead of careening through a battle trying to track down one person, and not even the person he’s trying to kidnap. 

That’s something an impulsive person does. A desperate person? That’s relatable. Sokka’s felt pretty desperate over the past six days. Okay, he’s not giving Zuko the benefit of the doubt — he’s not! — but if Sokka had realized that there was _one other person_ who understood what he was going through, wouldn’t he have done some truly inadvisable shit to try to touch base with them? 

Well, not if the person was Zuko, given the pre-existing beef. And Sokka would have thought through the approach _a little bit more_! But if it was a friend… or someone he wanted to become friends with… yeah, sure, he would have done a lot of dumb things to find someone who could confirm he’s not going crazy. 

This could all be one big manipulation. That’s, like, Zuko’s thing. That and yelling and shooting fire. But if this _is_ an attempt to trick Sokka, it seems more confusing than effective?

Ugh, his brain is going in circles. If he could just talk through this with someone — 

Everyone else is still asleep, like they always are, and he can’t exactly wake them all up to force them to listen to him spout hypotheticals about a person they last saw allying himself with Azula and nearly getting Aang killed. 

But if Sokka made everyone a big breakfast and that _happened_ to wake everyone up earlier than usual and then Zuko _happened_ to come up organically during their morning convo… 

Sokka grabs his knapsack and runs down the path to the beach in search of a meal.

* * *

On his seventh consecutive Day of Black Sun, Zuko wakes up in his bed and his brain is a metronome bouncing back and forth between two thoughts: _I was right about Sokka_ and _Sokka hates me_. (And in between them, faintly: _I would_ love _to not get hit by a rock again._ ) He doesn’t know what to do with this — he gets a half-second of elation from being correct about something for once, from not being alone, from the confirmation that whatever they’re trapped in has rules (and rules mean they might be able to learn how it works and escape) and then he’s absolutely bodied by depression because he’s still functionally alone if the only other person experiencing this despises him.

There’s no point in trying to work together with someone who lets their friend kill you, right? He’s pretty sure that Boulder guy was Sokka’s friend. They knew each other, definitely. Sokka had seemed kind of weird about the exchange with the earthbender (embarrassed for some reason?) but when the Boulder had asked about Zuko, Sokka sure hadn’t said anything like, “No, don’t kill him” or “No, he’s not bothering me” and that spoke volumes. 

Spirits, he had had one shot at making a good first “I’ve-changed!” impression and he’d blown it so profoundly that he’s probably doomed him and Sokka to spend the rest of their lives like this. And even if they get out, Sokka sure as hell won’t let Zuko join Team Avatar now. 

Fuck. 

What’s the point of getting out of bed on a loop of a day like today? Zuko rolls over on his stomach, plants his face in his pillow and tries to manifest a world in which his problems don’t exist if he can’t see them. 

* * *

When Sokka returns with his haul — some purple berries and nuts he found along the footpath for Aang, turtle crabs for everyone else — he isn’t quiet about it. As noisily as possible, he piles up sticks, strikes flint and steel together to start a fire, gets their little cooking pot of water bubbling and when that doesn’t seem to rouse anyone, he just intermittently clears his throat while waiting for the turtle crabs to boil.

No dice.

Sokka’s all the way to cracking the cooked turtle crabs out of their shells and plating them on these big leaves he found on his walk when the sleepers finally begin to rouse. 

Katara wanders over first and comes to an abrupt stop when she sees the fruits of Sokka’s labor.

“Wow… this is a lot of food,” she says, looking bewildered.

“Well, we’re growing people,” he replies cheerily.

“I kind of thought you might be too nervous to eat today,” she ventures.

“What! Me? It’s like you don’t know me at all!” 

(She knows him extremely well.)

“Tea?” he asks, ladle in hand.

“Yes, thanks! Wait, is that the same water you used to boil the —”

“What? Waste not, want not!”

“I don’t want _turtle crab_ tea, Sokka!” Katara exclaims, immediately grabbing the pot from him so she can empty, scrub, and refill it with clean water.

“So Sokka made breakfast,” drawls Toph as she joins them around the fire. “What a cool and not at all terrifying prospect.”

“You’re _welcome_ ,” Sokka faux-pouts, handing her a leaf-plate. “Hey, how’d you sleep, Aang?”

Aang flies up with the same well-rested grin on his face he always has, only slightly altered by his clear surprise about the meal that’s waiting for him. “Like a baby moose lion! You made breakfast?”

“You know, big day, most important meal of the day,” Sokka demurs. “Hey, I found this stuff along the cliffside but I’m not one hundred percent some of those berries aren’t poisonous so maybe check…”

“Oh, um, thank you,” replies Aang, before joining the circle and beginning to sort what Sokka foraged into “edible” and “inedible” piles. 

There’s a pleasant silence that falls as Katara pours out fresh tea and everyone digs in. Well, it’s pleasant for everyone but Sokka, who went to all this trouble for a very specific conversational goal. Everyone sure is not talking, huh. Don’t they usually have a conversation — doesn’t Toph usually say something?

“So, Aang… what’s the plan, what’s the strat to take out Ozai?” Sokka throws out, a little desperately.

“Oh, yeah!” Toph perks up. “Gonna hit him with a little Avatar State action?”

Aang’s face clouds over. “I can’t —”

“And _speaking of_ Ozai,” Sokka bulldozes over him. “Zuko. Am I right? Do we — do we think we’re gonna run into him today? Like, crazy idea, but if we were taking bets, do we — what do we think the likelihood is that he changes sides? Um, to our — to join us. Do we — do we all feel like that’s something that could happen? Maybe? Or no. Or no? Anyone want to put down a percentage? You know, on the possibility of him joining the old Gaang?” 

Katara looks honestly more offended about this than the crab water tea thing. 

“Uhh, zero percent chance? Also since when are we calling ourselves that?”

“Okay, I get why you would say that, and also I’d thought we’d agreed —”

“He’s done nothing but attack and betray us! He made me feel all bad for him in Ba Sing Se and then he turned on us and almost got Aang —” She glances over at Aang, who is looking extremely bummed out, and opts not to finish the sentence. “That’s not something a good person does. He’s not a good person,” she finishes fiercely. 

“I know all that, it was just a hypothetical —”

“But you can only think about it as a hypothetical because you weren’t _there_ —”

“Uh, I was there when he attacked our village and —! Ugh, whatever, I’m sorry I brought it up!”

“I think it’s kind of an interesting question,” interjects Toph. 

Katara turns her frown in Toph’s direction but Toph is utterly immune and Aang looks palpably relieved by the break in sibling tension. 

“I mean, obviously the Fire Nation blows and his family blows in particular, so odds are stacked against him. But I don’t know! My family fucking sucks —” 

“Toph!”

“I’m allowed to say ‘fuck’, Miss Fussy Britches! Anyway, my dad for sure sucks, but I’m okay because I decided I didn’t want to be like him. And I think anyone can do that if they want — you know, make that choice.”

“Exactly!” Sokka enthuses. “That’s what’s wild, right? Like he _could_ choose to do better!”

“But he doesn’t,” Katara cuts in. “He could but he hasn’t — and he has had —” She hesitates for a microsecond. “— a fucking lot of opportunities —”

“Katara!”

“Don’t you start, Sokka!”

“No, no, I love it!” he says, waving his hands in gleeful surrender.

Katara rolls her eyes and continues. “ _Anyway_ , yes, he’s had all these chances to be literally anything other than evil and he keeps not taking them! At a certain point, those chances expire!”

“Yeah, okay,” Toph says. “But to be fair, it’s kinda easier to be good when you have, you know, friends and stuff. I don’t know that he’s getting a lot of positive reinforcement.”

“I was offering him a lot of fucking positive reinforcement when we were in prison together!”

“Wow, we’re really broken the seal on ‘fuck’, huh?” Toph stage-whispers to Sokka with a grin.

Aang gives an uncomfortable little cough and the conversation grinds to a halt.

“Oh, um, I didn’t mean to make everyone —” He fiddles with the hem of his robes unhappily. Katara reaches out and gently rests a hand on Aang’s knee, and a look of gratitude crosses his face before he continues. “I think everyone has good in them, and that’s true for Zuko, too. So he could definitely change and act better. And I hope...” He trails off and grows solemn. “But Katara’s right. The way he’s behaved, I don’t see how we could ever trust him. Or let him fight alongside us.” 

Something twists inside Sokka. He chooses not to examine it. “Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. You’re probably right.”

Katara suddenly stands up and looks past them all, out at the water. “Oh no. Sokka, do you think that fog will delay the invasion?”

“No, that _is_ the invasion,” Sokka replies distractedly. He didn’t realize they’d be here so soon. In the back of his mind, he realizes that this is the first time he hasn’t been excited to see the fleet arrive.

Ugh, this Zuko thing is a pebble in his boot and it’s going to bug Sokka all day and given the circumstances, “all day” probably means “forever”.

“Hey.” Katara nudges Sokka with her foot. Oh, of course, they’re all supposed to go down to the beach to meet the ships now.

Well, if this day is going to keep happening, couldn’t Sokka do… whatever he wants? Ugh, the thought of walking away from the invasion plan, _his_ invasion plan, makes him slightly sick to his stomach –– he likes to plan things! he likes to finish things! –– but it’s not going anywhere, right? He can run…an errand and then come back and get run over by a tank or whatever and he’ll have plenty of more opportunities to try the day again waiting for him. Right?

Oh, spirits, he’s got to turn off his brain and just do it if he’s gonna do it.

“You coming?”

“You guys go ahead, I’ve gotta —“ Sokka gestures at the mess around the campfire. “— and there’s — I gotta add one more thing to Appa’s armor — I’ll be down in a second!”

Katara is clearly baffled by this choice, but something (maybe the residual frustration from breakfast) gets her not to push him to join — she just narrows her eyes and says skeptically, “Okay, I’ll tell Dad you’re on your way,” and heads down the cliff with Aang and Toph.

The second his friends disappear from sight, Sokka rushes over to Appa, who has been grazing peaceably all morning.

“Heyyyyy, my guy,” Sokka whispers to the sky bison, who regards him with one eye coolly. “Wanna go on a quick little flight?”

* * *

An indeterminate of time later and Zuko has proven that napping does not in any measurable way affect the loop and also that he has trouble not clenching his jaw when he sleeps but not much else. He’s trying to reconcile himself to an endless future of hiding out under these covers — never getting away from his father, never earning forgiveness from his uncle or the Avatar, being forced to eternally lie in the bed he’s made (metaphorically, of course — one of his core problems stems from the fact that he’s lying in a bed anonymous servants made literally) — 

When there’s a knock. 

He almost misses it — his head being still firmly planted facedown in his pillow means his bad ear’s the one facing the door — but he catches a faint tapping and is halfway heaving himself up and out of the sheets when he realizes who it must be: the servants who always come to put his armor at this point in the morning. 

There’s no world in which he’s willing to go through that charade right now, but also he can’t just tell them to fuck off, either — he doesn’t want to get them all in trouble by sending them away with a job undone or have them report back something to Ozai that makes his father so mad he comes out of the bunker to rid himself of Zuko once and for all — 

Shit! Shit. The servants are probably just normal people — how do normal people get out of things they don’t want to do? 

And then Zuko remembers the oldest trick in the book. It’s an embarrassing one to try to pull at the age of sixteen, especially among fellow firebenders, but who is Zuko fooling, imagining that he has any dignity left to protect? He completely whiffed on his stated goal of capturing the Avatar, it took him this long to figure out that his family were the bad guys all along and he’s currently knee-deep in what he can only assume is cosmic punishment. 

So faking a fever it is. 

He coaxes his body temperature up until there’s sweat beading on his forehead, tries to look pitiful, and calls them in. 

* * *

Stealing Appa (can you steal a creature as smart as Appa? is this actually more like kidnapping? or getting a friend to take you somewhere under false pretenses?) required a certain amount of coaxing, wheedling and outright begging. (Appa had been promised a truly absurd amount of treats.) Flying into Caldera City required a combination of tactical maneuvers and pure, stupid derring-do that still had Sokka’s nerves a bit jangly. (Before he’d figured out how high they needed to fly to stay camouflaged by clouds, some Fire Nation projectiles had gotten a little too close for comfort). 

But finding a maybe-abdicating prince in an all-but-completely evacuated volcano city? Sokka has no idea what this requires. He has limited facts at his disposal — he knows that in one version of this day, Zuko had ended up in the bunker underneath the city and another time, he’d gone down to the beach. Sokka’s in neither of those places. But he’s come early enough (presuming the invasion is going ahead as planned without him, they should be just loading the boats) that maybe Zuko’s…wherever he usually is when he’s not fighting his sister or careening around a battlefield like someone with a death-wish? 

Princes live in prince houses, right? What do these guys call them? Oh, yeah, palaces. So he’s looking for the largest house, with the loudest decor. Gross. (Sokka can appreciate the finer things in life but this level of stratification of wealth creeps him out.) 

Appa darts down out of the clouds and somehow they make it over the walls of the city’s central compound without drawing attention and Sokka could almost forgive the universe for putting him through all this for this one piece of luck. 

Okay. If he was Little Lord Jerkface, where would he be?

They land, Sokka does a fast scan of the surroundings, and then, as quietly as possible, he leads Appa out of the enormous barren courtyard to a smaller one with actual plants and a pond. 

“This seems like a cool place to hang,” Sokka whispers to the sky bison, who remains completely inscrutable. Sokka uses all the hand signals in his repertoire to tell Appa to stay there and not make any noise. As usual, he has no idea whether his request has gotten through but, heartbeat pounding in his ears, Sokka turns and enters the palace through the closest door. 

Well, the yikes factor magnifies by about a million when he’s by himself in an empty, echoey foyer that’s somehow dimly lit even though there are enormous roaring braziers up and down either wall. 

“Would it kill you guys to put in some windows?” Sokka mutters under his breath. Thankfully, no one answers him.

Okay, one hallway, two different ways to go. Honestly, both ways look identically soulless to him —

Way down the hall to his right, Sokka hears a door open and shut. Whoever closed it probably didn’t actually slam it, but the silence and the size of this place (the height of the ceiling! you could fly a war balloon in here!) means it might as well be a cannonball firing. Sokka presses himself into the shadow behind a pillar and holds his breath. 

Feet softly pad his way — multiple pairs. It’s two people, having a whispered conversation, getting closer and closer. No clanking armor, so hopefully not soldiers. Sokka can’t really catch more than snatches of sentences but it sounds like “— of all the —” “You’re such —” “He really did look —” “— disgrace —” “ — his father —” and then the voices fade away as the speakers hurry by his hiding spot without a second glance and hook a right into a passageway he hadn’t noticed before. 

Sokka waits a full minute and a half before slinking out back out into the meager light, just to be sure, but there’s no indication that the people who’d passed by are coming back. 

Whew. Back to the mission at hand.

It’s a dumb hunch but what else does he have to go on? Sokka jogs down the right-hand hallway toward the person that those two strangers had described as a “disgrace” — the person he hopes is Zuko.

* * *

You can, it turns out, think you are mentally prepared for humiliation and still be absolutely walloped by the reality of it. Zuko has felt stupid and small many times in his life, but has he ever felt more devastatingly silly than when telling the servants carting in his freshly burnished armor that he won’t be defending the city today because he’s under the weather?

I mean, it had worked — they’d left, flummoxed and clearly embarrassed for him (by him?) — but at what cost.

Zuko is definitely not leaving this bed now, not ever — he’s going to burrow so far under the blankets that not even a badgermole will be able to find him — he gives a farewell glance to the the world outside his bed and — 

Someone is turning the handle of his door. 

He can see the handle twisting slowly and deliberately — oh fuck, maybe Azula has somehow figured out that he’d once planned to flee or his father’s decided to off him quietly after all — 

Zuko slips out of bed and, quick as a flash, slides one dao from its sheath and creeps toward the door. 

He puts his hand on the handle. He yanks it open.

* * *

Well, Sokka’s found him! On the other side of the door is Zuko. In a nightshirt. Hair a mess, sticking up in places with sweat. Brandishing a sword. Looking very mad. 

“Oh, fuck, you _are_ evil!” exclaims Sokka. “I knew I shouldn’t have —”

“No, I’m not! No, I’m not!” Zuko hisses back insistently, raising both hands up (one very much still holding a sword) in a pseudo sign of surrender. “What are you even —?” The firebender squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose for a half second out of what looks like a mix of disbelief and frustration and then composes himself. “Ugh, just come in here and be quiet!” 

Before Sokka can defend himself, Zuko grabs Sokka’s collar, yoinks him into the room, and closes and locks the door behind them. 

Sokka opens his mouth to ask one of his approximately thirty-five clarifying questions, but the other boy holds up a pointer finger and pulls such a desperate, stressed face that Sokka feels almost bad for him and acquiesces to the unspoken request to wait a second. 

He stands stock still as Zuko presses his unscarred ear to the door. 

Silence.

No one comes running to kill them or drag them to jail. 

After a few more beats, Zuko exhales, pivots, and, with a voice that, strangely, sounds more awestruck than angry, asks, “How did you get here?”

And at the same time, Sokka’s dumb mouth blurts out, “Do you always look this bad in the morning?” and he busts out laughing for the first time since this whole mess got started. 

* * *

He’s laughing. There’s a boy in Zuko’s bedroom for the first time ever (don’t unpack _that_ right now) and he’s laughing. 

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Zuko demands under his breath, more venomously than he means to. 

“I’m sorry,” Sokka replies, wiping tears of laughter away. “I didn’t — I wasn’t trying to be —”

“You can’t just show up at someone’s house and be mean to their face! Were you raised in a —”

“Oh, I don’t think so, buddy!” Sokka’s expression abruptly becomes indignant. “You showed up to _my_ invasion and said —”

“I didn’t say anything mean to you!”

“You said I was _ruining_ this for you!”

“That’s not mean, that’s the truth!” 

There’s a half-second where it looks like Sokka might take the bait and let the argument spiral out of both their control, but then, instead, he huffs and crosses his arms. His arms look nice. All of him looks nice — put-together! battle-ready! confident! — and right now Zuko looks like a tall child who overslept on the day of the big test. 

Zuko feels his shoulders slump against his will and he wordlessly weaves around Sokka to reunite his dao with the sheath he discarded earlier on the floor. 

Sokka, meanwhile, starts taking in the room. “So this is how the other half lives, huh?” he asks. It’s clearly not a compliment.

“It’s not — I didn’t design it,” Zuko throws over his shoulder. “Why are you here?”

“I’m following up,” replies Sokka and he sounds further away — Zuko turns back and Sokka’s now wandered over to his desk and is rifling through the drawers and the papers piled on top.

“Do you _mind_?” Zuko hustles over to shoo Sokka away. 

“Just seeing if you had any evil plans lying out.” Sokka refuses to move, even though Zuko’s now crowding him. The Water Tribe boy shoots him a truly shit-eating grin. “Just kidding, I know you don’t plan anything.”

“You’re just a new part of this punishment, aren’t you?” says Zuko. “The spirits sent you here because the time loop wasn’t torture enough.”

“Okay, first of all, are we calling them ‘loops’, because I’ll be honest, that _is_ cool — but secondly — I’m sorry, do you think this whole same day situation is about _you_?”

“The time loop?”

“Yes, if we’re calling it that — the time loop!”

“I mean —” Zuko’s sentence comes to an abrupt halt. He realizes that an alternative had never occurred to him. 

“ _I’m_ the person who has a whole —” Sokka points behind himself (presumably where he thinks the battlefield is — it’s actually off to his right but it’s easy to get turned around in here). “— thing going on. You’re what? Moping in the emptiest, most unnecessarily huge room known to man?”

“Oh, you should see the throne room,” Zuko mutters. “No, I’m not just —! I have… a whole thing going on.” 

It’s shoddy workmanship, as far as evasions go, but, blessedly, Sokka doesn’t press him on it. He seems to be shifting into detective mode. “Hmm. Did you die on Day One?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“I don’t — a little after the eclipse.”

“How soon after?”

“I wasn’t counting the minutes, I was in a fight!”

“Oh!” Sokka seems genuinely taken aback for a moment before something unpleasant occurs to him. “ _Oh_ , with —” He gestures back and forth in the small space between them (Sokka hasn’t moved away from Zuko, seemingly on principle.) “You mean, against our guys?” 

“No.” Zuko looks down, peeved by the assumption that he would have fought to protect the Fire Nation, even though he knows it’s a fair one. “I wanted to join the Avatar before… all this.”

“Oh. Then who were you —” 

Zuko’s eyes snap back up to lock with Sokka’s. “Look. Do _you_ want to talk about how you died the first time around?”

“No. Not really,” Sokka replies uneasily. 

“Okay, then.” Zuko loses the unspoken bet and steps back. “Now, speaking of dying — can you tell your boyfriend not to kill me next time?” (It’s such a stupid, petty thing to say, especially when they were inching closer to an accord, but Zuko apparently has dumb bitch disease.)

“My boyfriend?” Sokka seems remarkably nonplussed. “Who? The _Boulder_? I wish.” He shakes his head sadly. “He’s kinda a celebrity and a little old for me…”

“I don’t see the appeal,” snipes Zuko. 

“Well, he’s a — you guys got himbos in the Fire Nation?”

Zuko stares at him blankly.

“Jeez, no wonder you guys are so uptight. A himbo is a —”

“I don’t need to — How did you get here? You never answered me!”

“Appa!” Sokka says, beaming.

“Who’s that?”

“Seriously, dude? Are you so obsessed with Aang you don’t know anyone else’s name?”

Zuko’s face fully rebels from his brain and turns crimson. “I know other people’s names!”

“Do you know _my_ name?” Sokka asks, eyes wide, piercingly blue, and very amused.

“Yes! It’s Sokka.” 

“Okay, but _when_ did you learn my name? It was embarrassingly late in the game, wasn’t it?” 

Zuko would rather lay his body in a cold, hard grave than cop to the fact that he figured it out yesterday. “I am begging you. To please tell me who Appa is.”

“I’ll do you one better — I’m gonna introduce you guys right now!” says Sokka, hooking an arm around Zuko’s shoulders and guiding him towards the door. “Honestly, I shouldn’t have left him alone this long — though maybe you want to put on a robe or something before we go?”

The blushing situation is going from bad to worse. Zuko ducks his head out from Sokka’s grasp and stomps over to the closet, where he grabs an oxblood yukata and pulls it on moodily. “Why aren’t you, I don’t know, afraid of me?”

“Aw, bud! I was never afraid of you. I mean, to be clear, you fucking sucked and I hated you — and you’re still on thin ice!” Sokka does the two finger ‘I’m watching you’ gesture. “But you’ve always been… more shout-y than scary,” he concludes, leaning against one of the posts of Zuko’s bed.

“If you were smart, you’d be more wary around me,” Zuko grumbles, slipping on sandals.

“I told you, I’m plenty wary,” Sokka replies breezily. “Okay, Your Angstiness, you ready to go?”

* * *

It’s harder than Sokka expects to find his way back to Appa but he would rather die permanently than admit it. (Hadn’t he just gone straight down a hallway? He thought so, but there were more off-shoots down it now than he remembered.)

Finally, he finds an enormous door that looks familiar and they’re back in the grassy courtyard — really more like a garden, now that Sokka’s looking at it — and there’s Appa, settled under a large tree and gazing at the turtle ducks doing lazy circles in the pond. 

“Oh, you were talking about the Avatar’s bison.” 

“Say it with me: his name is Appa. Hi, Appa!” Sokka says, steering Zuko forward. 

“Hi, Appa,” Zuko repeats very quietly.

“Good grief, he’s not going to eat you, he’s a vegetarian. Put out your hand so he can smell you.” 

Zuko stands very still with both palms up and out as Sokka beckons his furry friend over. 

“I don’t know what this is supposed to achieve — he won’t remember me tomorrow.”

“Shut up. You wanna join the Gaang so bad, you gotta meet all the members and be nice about it. Okay, now, Appa, you might recognize this as the guy with the dumb little ponytail —”

“You’re one to talk,” the Fire Nation prince snickers.

If he was a bender, steam really would be coming out of Sokka’s ears. “With the _dumb little ponytail_ who used to chase us all over the world and do war crimes but he _swears_ he’s trying to get his shit together —”

Appa brings his enormous head very close to Zuko and Sokka can see the other boy go absolutely rigid with terror. It’s extremely satisfying to watch. And then any schadenfreude evaporates as Appa declines to do anything intimidating and instead gives Zuko a fond and very wet lick.

“Appa, I didn’t say for sure if we could trust him yet!”

Zuko gripes as he struggles to wipe the slobber from his face but, for a second, Sokka gets to see the firebender’s face unguarded, without a trace of frustration or self-consciousness on it, and it’s… huh. He looks like a completely different person. Almost happy. It’s wild.

“I didn’t think he’d remember me,” Zuko says with surprising warmth, as he cautiously puts a hand on Appa’s forehead to pet the thick fur there. 

“Remember you from the aforementioned reign of terror?” Sokka asks incredulously. 

“No, Ba Sing Se,” Zuko replies, without taking his eyes off the sky bison. “I went looking for him after you dropped all those missing posters.” 

“Because you’re so noble and caring?”

“Because I wanted to steal him and hold him hostage,” Zuko admits. “So I could, you know —”

“Use him as a lure to capture the Avatar, yeah, I get that that was 98.5% of your motivation until, like, yesterday. The yesterday six days ago. Whatever, you get it.” Sokka joins Zuko and devotes himself to scratching behind Appa’s left ear. “Wait, so did you beef the big bison heist? Because we didn’t see you around when we busted into Lake Laogai.”

“Um, my uncle convinced me to let him go.”

“You are the weirdest —! Why do you look more embarrassed talking about the one good thing you did than everything else?”

“I —” Zuko furrows his brows and then gives a small shrug. “I have no fucking clue.”

Sokka gives a little huff of a laugh. “Cool, that tracks.”

They lapse into a bizarrely companionable silence as Appa luxuriates in their undivided attention. It’s so much quieter and more aimless than anything Sokka’s experienced since the Day of Black Sun started repeating, and the thought of dragging himself away almost breaks his heart. But his friends and family need him. And it’s not like he should be spending extra time with their dumb ex-enemy. 

“So. Just want to make sure I have all the info straight — we both died the first time and I died the second, fourth, fifth and sixth loop. I’m assuming you kicked the bucket on number three?”

Zuko nods grimly.

“So, we’re for sure linked. And if one of us dies, we both experience the day resetting.”

“With the —” Zuko makes the ‘pop’ sound and does the ‘down the drain’ hand motion.

“Yeah, the —” Sokka does the gesture back in agreement. 

“Then, look — I know I’m not the plan guy, but it seems like we should stay here with Appa and, uh, not get killed.”

“If it just affected me, maybe, but…” Sokka looks away and bounces one leg anxiously. “There are versions of this day where… people I love get hurt. Like, a lot of them. But I have the chance to figure out how to do it right, so everyone gets out okay! And I can’t give that up. I need to go back, and do the invasion until I figure out all the things that are wrong with it and fix them and _then_ we can do the whole not dying thing.”

Zuko looks at Sokka like he’s trying to puzzle something out, but what it is, Sokka has no idea.

“Look, I’m sorry to rope you into this, you can definitely just stay here if you want —”

“No! No, I want to help. I only stayed here this loop —” Zuko dips into a mortified whisper. “— because I thought you hated me and stuff. Also I didn’t want that guy —”

“The Boulder,” Sokka corrects him, embracing the opportunity to be absolutely insufferable. 

“— _The Boulder_ to kill me again,” Zuko concludes, under considerable duress.

“Can’t believe you’ve flipped from doing everything possible to get me to hate you to being devastated by the mere thought of it. They grow up so fast,” Sokka says blasély. Zuko opens his mouth (presumably with a comeback), but Sokka glances up to the darkening sky, where the eclipse is quickly approaching, and cuts him off. “Now, I don’t mind saying that I totally fucked things up on my end by coming here so we should go ahead and call this loop before it gets too far along.”

“Okay,” agrees Zuko.

Sokka looks at him expectantly.

“What?”

“Go ahead and take me out, buddy!”

“Excuse me?” Zuko’s flush makes a speedy comeback.

Sokka laughs a little nervously. “Don’t make me — c’mon, just —” He does the ‘slitting the throat’ gesture, accompanied by a gross little choking sound. “— me real quick.”

Zuko does some kind of double take, which makes Sokka wonder what he’d thought he meant the first time around, and starts vigorously shaking his head. “No way! I’m not killing you!”

“Oh, _now_ you won’t try to kill me! Just do it super fast, I promise I won’t be weird about it!”

“That is a promise you _cannot_ keep! Because I will have killed you and that’s pretty fucking weird!”

“You are being such a baby!”

“ _I_ _’m_ —?”

“You’re going to make me go all the way down to the beach so I can get run over by a tank when you could take me out in two seconds with a fireball right now —”

“Sokka, you don’t want to go out that way,” says Zuko with a new seriousness.

“I already have! As recently as, oh, two loops ago? Your sister ringing any bells?” Sokka throws up his hands in disgust. “Whatever, I’ll take care of it myself, see you whenever.” He begins stomping toward where he hopes the exit to the palace compound is. 

“Wait. Wait! I’m serious, stop!”

“What!” demands Sokka, whirling back around.

“Look, it works if either one of us gets killed, right? So why don’t you just… kill me?”

It’s one of the most lackluster pitches Sokka has ever heard. “Are you serious?” he asks, eyes narrowed.

“Yeah, it seems —” Zuko searches for a word and seems to decide against it. “Yeah, I’m serious.” He gives a strained laugh. “Take me out, dude.”

“Don’t say ‘dude’, we’re not there yet,” Sokka says grumpily as he walks back towards Zuko and Appa. 

“You’ve called me that! And ‘buddy’ —”

“You’re the offending party. You have to grovel and I get to call you whatever I want.” Sokka gets up close to Zuko to look him sternly in the eyes. “You’re really serious. _You’re_ not going to make it weird?”

Zuko doesn’t flinch under his scrutiny. He wouldn’t pass muster as a Water Tribe warrior, of course, but there’s some earnest desire to be brave there, Sokka thinks (or hopes). 

“It was my idea,” Zuko says, sounding reasonably steady.

So Sokka decides to take him at his word.

“Okay. Okay! Alright, let’s —! Um.” Suddenly, there is nervous energy flooding through Sokka’s body. “How do we — do you want to sit or —? Oh, Appa, you’re gonna wanna look away for this part, Aang would lose his mind if I let you watch me do a murder —” Sokka hurriedly leads Appa back to the turtle duck pond, facing away from them, and then runs back. 

“I don’t — can I stand?” Zuko looks as lost as Sokka feels. 

“Yeah, I mean, probably? Piandao didn’t really — it was only two days, we didn’t really cover this —”

“ _Piandao_? Er, ignore me, we should stay focused — we can talk about that later. Do you want me against a tree or —?”

“Um. It’s probably less — I mean, if I run you through — sorry, do you want to weigh in on the —” Sokka does a very weak hand wave meant to indicate ‘the method’. “— or do you just want me to just — do something?”

“I mean, whatever you — I’m — I’m down for anything,” says Zuko, sounding alarmingly like a sixteen-year-old trying to play it cool and not at all like an enemy combatant. 

“Okay. Okay.” Sokka knows he’s nodding too much but he can’t stop. “Cool, so you stand there and I’m gonna —” He draws his beloved space sword, which he very much did not intend to christen by stabbing an unarmed Fire Nation prince in the heart. It’s just fucking one of those days, huh? His palms are at maximum sweaty.

Zuko looks very pale but, to his credit, hasn’t run for the hills yet. 

“Um, I don’t want it to — I want it to be quick and clean, okay?” Sokka clamps his left hand down on Zuko’s shoulder to anchor him — Sokka looks questioningly at Zuko as he does this and Zuko nods his assent — and draws his right hand back so the sword’s tip is an inch away from the other boy’s chest. The blade wavers just a little bit. 

“You good?” Sokka asks. (As soon as he says it, he realizes there’s no sane answer to this question.)

Zuko swallows and nods.

It doesn’t seem honorable to avoid eye contact with the person you’re about to stab, but also maintaining eye contact is making this very intense. Sokka’s never paid attention to eye color in his life but these bad boys are extremely gold, huh? And there’s a lot of trust beaming out of them. _I know he hasn’t earned_ my _trust at this point_ , he thinks faintly. _But why do I seem to have earned_ his _?_

“Are we doing this?” Zuko asks, voice croaking a little. 

“Yeah. Yeah.” Sokka draws the sword back a little further so he’ll have more momentum for the thrust. “Yeah, okay, I’m —”

“Wait-wait-wait!”

Sokka’s sword arm drops to his side like a stone and equal parts panic and relief show on his face. “What? What is it?”

“You didn’t say what I’m supposed to do.”

Sokka looks utterly baffled. “You’re — you’re supposed to stand there while I —”

“No, in the next loop. _You’re_ going to try and figure out the invasion, but what am _I_ supposed to do?”

“Huh. Yeah, good point. Oh, and actually we should figure out some kind of way we can communicate with each other so we — uh, what are you looking at?”

Zuko’s eyes have flicked away from Sokka’s face to something over Sokka’s shoulder. He looks alarmed.

“We have company.”

“Unhand the prince!” announces a new adult person who has apparently joined them in the garden. 

“Oh, for the — what now!” yells Sokka as he turns around. 

There’s an enormous wave of heat accompanied by a whooshing sound as Sokka is hit by a deadly faceful of fire from a palace guard who clearly thinks he’s about to earn a pay raise for saving Zuko’s life. 

Sokka’s dead before he hits the ground but in the millisecond before he goes prone and everything goes dark, his ears pick up something that he thought he’d never in a million years hear: Zuko saying, “Fuck! Sokka, I’m so sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: [completely outlines this fic and starts writing according to the outline]  
> me: okay but i want the boys to have a scene together NOW  
> me: [skips stuff so i can get to their shenanigans]  
> me: fixing this is a problem for future rosalind :) 
> 
> i am filled with hubris, delight that such lovely ppl have chosen to read this, and, as always, immense gratitude to caroline for humoring me, fixing my plot problems, and making sure i don’t misspell “brain” 
> 
> come bother me at gideongriddle on tumblr


	4. CLOWN-TO-CLOWN COMMUNICATION

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> loop 8: a battlefield meet-up, lies and truths, appa loving hours continued, a conversation about local produce, the inherent homoeroticism of learning how to do a forearm handshake

Once, when they were in a crowded marketplace in Ba Sing Se, Sokka had overheard a mother tell her children to stay where they were if they ever got separated from her.

At the time, he had thought that was total nonsense — tell a Southern Water Tribe kid that they should stay put if they got lost out on the tundra and you were putting them in danger of hypothermia or an encounter with a polar bear dog. No, if you get yourself lost, you need to start walking and get yourself found. 

But jerking awake in the island grass on his eighth consecutive Day of Black Sun, Sokka finally sees how that advice might work in certain circumstances. If you get separated from the person you’re with but you’ve _told_ them where-ish you’re going to be, they’ll only be able to track you down if you keep your word. Sokka had told Zuko he’d be trying to problem-solve his way through the invasion before they’d been so rudely interrupted by a Fire Nation guard. So if he wants Zuko to find him (and it is up to Zuko to arrange their next strat chat — Sokka did all the legwork last time), he should stay on course. If Zuko doesn’t show… well, then Sokka will know exactly how ineffectual of an ally he has on his hands. 

The terrible, always-whirring part of Sokka’s brain that insists on free association at the most inopportune times pings from the phrase “on my hands” to the feeling of putting a hand on Zuko’s shoulder, the surprising solidity and unsurprising warmth he’d found there, and then to the memory of his other hand, sweaty and unsure, wrapped around the hilt of his prized sword. How fucking bizarre to have _had_ that fantasy — of having the prince who’d relentlessly pursed them finally defeated, unarmed and at swordpoint, of knowing he was never going to be a danger to them ever again — and then to have it come true and it turn out to be — what? Embarrassing? 

Sokka tries to come up with a mental list of the people in the world he would trust to hold a sword to his throat. The people who, if they told him it would be okay in the end, he would let kill him. Obviously, the whole Gaang. Suki. His dad. Gran Gran. Bato. Like, so many members of his tribe and so many people taking part in the invasion, actually, because they’re family and brothers-in-arms — shit, this is a long list, which — is that bad? Is that like _Oh, how cool that you have such a solid support system and have built trust with so many people_ or more like _Woof, you have to have a better sense of self-preservation_? Well, Sokka has two hands. 

But the point! The point he’s trying to make is that Zuko isn’t anywhere near the list. Zuko falls into the “I want to supervise you if you so much as pick up an embroidery needle” category. And surely that feeling goes both ways. So why did he —?

Ugh, brains aren’t for figuring out weirdo boys. Brains are for making game plans to save the day. Sokka stuffs his myriad questions about Zuko in another box, slides it under the metaphorical bed, and pulls out the maps to start studying troop movements.

* * *

On his eighth consecutive Day of Black Sun, Zuko wakes with an apology on his lips. It’s… strange. Waking up with regrets? Cool and normal. Waking up _wishing_ he had apologized to someone (nine times out of ten, Uncle)? He could go pro. But waking up having actually gotten the words “I’m” and “sorry” into the open air, back-to-back, without accidentally sounding angry or sarcastic?

It’s not that he’s opposed to apologies. On the contrary! He loves them! Would love to receive some from, uh, multiple family members someday. But personally, he’s just no good at them. He has no talent whatsoever for turning the profound and real contrition in his heart into comprehensible, audible sentences, so he’s come to see it as a bit of a lost cause. 

Sokka would probably laugh at him for that. Tell him to stop bitching and moaning and _practice_ apologizing then, because that’s the only way to get —

Well, that’s alarming. Why is there any part of his brain providing him with what Sokka might do? In _any_ given situation? This is a person who up until, what, a week ago — hmm, time is fake — was someone Zuko thought of exclusively as an obstacle, whose name he very much did not know. 

Weirdness upon weirdness. 

Zuko really _is_ sorry about the thing with the guard. He knows well enough what it feels like to be killed by that kind of fire blast (it sucks) but he’s also sorry for the loss of an opportunity to do a gesture of good faith towards Sokka. Not that he’d relished the idea of getting skewered — staring down the barrel of unavoidable pain is not his strong suit and he’d been very nervous that Sokka’s aim would be off and that it would end up taking multiple (excruciating) stab wounds for him to actually kick the bucket. But he’d suggested it nonetheless because it had felt — oh, maybe this was stupid, but — like something out of a play. Like some kind of poetic justice to let himself be slain by a person he had wronged. Very cliffhanger before second intermission. 

Not that it would have wiped his slate clean, but it would have been something.

It would have been better than a half-assed “I’m sorry” or whatever it was he’d blurted out as Sokka crumpled before him. You’re supposed to say what you’re sorry for, Zuko knows that, and he’d blown even that most basic instruction. Is he going to have to apologize for his bad apology now? 

As appealing as the idea of spiraling over this is, he really has to achieve something this cycle. He and Sokka need time to plan, and Sokka’s got his plate full with the whole being part of an invasion thing, so Zuko will have to come to him. By some means other than those death trap tanks. 

He’ll just — he’ll just run down to the beach. If he leaves sooner rather than later, that should be fine, right? 

Zuko feels the siren song of pessimism in the back of his brain (this is a stupid plan, it doesn’t even really count as a plan, maybe Sokka doesn’t even want to see him?) and he tries to beat it back by looking for a bright side. Well, if he gets to the beach, he’ll get to see Appa again! Not that Appa will remember yesterday-today, but he seemed to have a positive takeaway from their encounter in Ba Sing Se and that can’t be erased by the loop. 

Also, Zuko’s not above getting in Appa’s good books with a bribe.

He starts getting dressed as quickly as possible and resolves to slip into the kitchen on his way out of the palace. 

* * *

The morning goes well. Well enough. 

Sokka will admit to not exactly being on his A-game. He keeps tiptoeing around Aang, expecting him to be mad about the whole stealing Appa thing yesterday but, of course, yesterday didn’t really happen to anyone but Sokka and Zuko, so Aang isn’t the least bit bothered. Sokka’s distracted — twice in the midst of conversations he’s had before, he finds himself staring up at the quarter-moon just barely visible in the pale blue sky, brain gone completely blank, only to realize someone’s waiting on him to answer a question. Despite spending the hour before everyone woke up convincing himself that he should let Zuko plan their meet-up (easier said than done to relinquish control of planning!!), mid-way through his speech to the troops, Sokka finds himself trying to crowdsource ways you could communicate with someone quickly in the midst of a battle (he gets no viable suggestions and Hakoda has to cough meaningfully multiple times to make Sokka realize he should get back on track). 

Still, Sokka gets the critical work done — making sure everyone is introduced to each other, making sure none of the submarines will sink. And now he’s back on his little cliff ledge, enjoying a moment of quiet, taking his sweet time donning his armor and letting his eyes unfocus a little on the big expanse of blue before him, when all of a sudden something orange and familiar whooshes up and over him. 

“We’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Aang says as he lands behind Sokka and folds up the wings of his glider. 

“My dad didn’t —?” Oh, of course, Hakoda wouldn’t have told them about this spot — he wouldn’t remember that they’d ever stood together up here. It’s surprisingly hard to remember how much everyone else forgets. “Never mind. Sorry, I didn’t mean to make anyone worry.”

The anticipatory apology seems to throw Aang off a little. “Oh. It’s okay! I think we’re just pretty much ready to go. Are you… okay?”

“Yeah! Yeah, of course, buddy.” Sokka brushes the question off with what he hopes is a convincingly unbothered smile. 

Aang doesn’t seem convinced. “I didn’t think your speech was that bad!” he announces with forceful cheer. 

Sokka makes a noise of disbelief. “Well, I didn’t think so either, until you just said that!”

“Oh, that’s — I thought that’s why you were — I mean —” Aang flounders.

“No, no, no, it’s fine. It definitely wasn’t my — I’ve done better,” Sokka assures him. “I wasn’t upset about the —. Man, it was really bad, huh?”

“Um. It was a little abstract?”

Sokka feels his mouth settle into a straight line. “Yeah, I’ve been —” He handwaves to indicate his scatterbrained state. He hopes Aang chalks it up to weird teenager energy. “Look, can I ask you a dumb question that you can’t ask any follow-ups about?”

Aang looks around for a hot second like Katara’s going to pop out and save him from this bizarre scenario, but when she doesn’t appear, he just makes a face that’s midway between nervous and bewildered and answers, “Sure?”

“Knowing what you know. About being the Avatar and everything. Is there any world in which, um, Zuko — orsomeonelikeZuko! — could bend time.” Sokka looks very intently at Aang. “Question mark,” he adds, because he realizes he’s made it sound more like a statement. 

“ _Time_?”

Sokka nods.

“Time isn’t an element,” Aang says, like he’s really baffled that this is in question.

“That’s what I said! Well, said to myself. No one else — but okay, you agree with me!”

“Yeah…” Aang looks more concerned now then when he first showed up. “Is this something you read about in the Library?”

“No,” Sokka replies breezily. He had been 97.84% sure Zuko wasn’t responsible for the loop, but it’s always nice to have someone triple-check your math. “No, if you don’t know about it, I’m sure —”

“I don’t know everything!” Aang’s voice is getting very high-pitched all of a sudden. “I didn’t get a full Avatar training! Maybe —”

“No, no, don’t freak out!”

“Maybe Monk Gyatso just didn’t get to it in time —”

“No, see this is why I said it was a dumb question!”

Aang doesn’t seem to hear him. “Or maybe I just didn’t pay close enough attention —”

“Stop!” Sokka takes Aang by the shoulders, guides the hands the Avatar has thrown up in the air back down to his sides. “This is why I told you no follow-ups.”

They have a little stand-off, each looking at the other warily. 

“Listen,” says Sokka, using his most older brother-y voice. “It was just a — a hypothetical. I mean, if the Fire Lord or whoever had the ability to control time, we’d know because he’d never shut up about it, right?”

Aang looks tentatively appeased by this.

“Cool. Cool. Now, I’m not trying to alarm you! But while we’re here, do you know if there are any spirits who can mess up —”

“Sokka, this really doesn’t sound like a hypothetical!”

“It is! It is. I promise.”

Aang squints at Sokka and then shakes his head. “There aren’t any spirits that — what, control time? — that I know about.” He hesitates. “You’d tell me if something were going on, right?”

Sokka looks at his friend’s worried face. You have to take the opportunities to protect people when they come. “Yeah, of course,” he lies. “Now, c’mon, you said they’re waiting for us.”

* * *

The beach is a lot farther away on foot than it seems by tank or komodo rhino or palanquin. Also running is a lot shittier than Zuko remembers. It’s not that he hasn’t become accustomed to roughing it — he spent three years banished with Uncle in all manner of outposts, on ships and backroads — but the taste of luxury he was given during his recent return to princehood somehow is making the trail dust he’s coughing now and the rocks that keep finding their way into his shoes seem especially aggravating and unjust. 

“Turning good is worth it,” Zuko repeats to himself dubiously as he continues to sprint toward the sounds of battle. “I definitely have no regrets.”

The drawstring bag slung over his shoulder slaps against his hip in a steady rhythm and he hopes the nashi inside isn’t getting too bruised. 

His legs keep moving but he lets gravity do the work of pulling him downhill. He imagines a version of his life where gravity was the irresistible force behind every one of his mistakes. Of course, he chased the Avatar all over the world. Of course, he disappointed Uncle and fell back into his father’s orbit. What choice did he have? Gravity. 

It’s not as satisfying or exculpatory a fantasy as he thought it might be. He tries to let it burn away.

Some impossibly long minutes later, his tired feet finally deposit him at the fringes of the battle. If this was a shitshow when he was in the top of a tank, Zuko doesn’t have the language to describe what the invasion looks like on the ground level. Enormous machinery rolls by him. Fire rains down from above. Everyone in a five mile radius seems to be yelling at the top of their lungs. The best word he has for it is “clusterfuck”.

_Where the —?_ Sokka and his dad end up on a komodo rhino, he remembers that. But when in the battle that happens, how far from the shore — those are memories Zuko absolutely did not store in his hippocampus. 

Two squadrons of komodo rhino riders thunder out of the gate and past him. Well, they probably steal one of those, right? But which? He has to choose a unit to follow now if he wants a snowball’s chance in Caldera of keeping up with them. 

“Let me be lucky,” Zuko mutters under his breath. “This _one time_ , let me be lucky.”

* * *

Sokka wishes that this repetitious nightmare worked in such a way that if you did a thing correctly once, you never had to worry about screwing it up again. But, of course, that’s not the case. 

It’s like he keeps getting the worst of both worlds. Keeping Hakoda alive this loop is just as fraught and difficult as the first seven times through and yet when Sokka successfully warns his dad about the soldier trying to sneak up behind him, the rescue is like 42% less satisfying because Sokka realizes he doesn’t know what’s on the other side of this part and maybe there will be something else that’ll kill his dad long before any of them can get to Ozai. 

And speaking of fiery nuisances, there’s Zuko, whom he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of. Sokka is trying not to let it bother him. _Trying_ . His brain keeps prompting him like _What if he died?_ and of course, that can’t be true because then Sokka would’ve done the whole pop-zip-down-the-drain thing. So what gives? Maybe he decided not to come. Maybe he opted to fly solo, doesn’t need Sokka (he’s a bender, after all). _Prepare yourself for disappointment_ , Sokka tries to reason with himself. _Stop hoping so loudly that you have someone to rely on, who can make this just a little bit easier._

Someone yanks on the komodo rhino’s left rein and it’s not Sokka, so by process of elimination, Hakoda’s responsible. Their stolen mount veers left and an enormous crossbow bolt fired from the top of the wall explodes right in the path they’d been on seconds before. Flying hog monkeys, Sokka’s got to get his head in the game or _he’s_ going to be the one to get them killed. 

“Sokka, we’ve got to take out those battlements,” his dad says in his ear and the tone of his voice isn’t quite annoyed but it does sound like he’s repeating himself. “It’s our only chance.”

Sokka goes, “Oh!” like he hadn’t heard before because of the noise, not because he hadn’t been paying attention. “For sure, for sure.” _Spirits, do_ something _of use._ He imagines his brain as an enormous book and tries to speed-read it, looking for a good idea. There’s nothing but garbage in there, of course: stress, hunger, worry for his friends, feeling small next to his dad and all the other warriors in the submarine on the way in, the fact that when Sokka had asked Aang if he could ask him a dumb question earlier, Aang had looked nervous and in retrospect, that was weird, what had Aang thought he was going to ask about? and of course, yesterday, all of yesterday, the coldness of the palace for all its self-proclaimed heat, the indignity of Appa actually liking Zuko — _Oh, duh_.

“I’ve got an idea.” Sokka takes back the reins and swivels around to look for his sister. 

* * *

It was stupid to wish for luck, Zuko realizes, because that’s not a measurable form of success. Who can say whether he made the right call as far as which squadron to follow because unsurprisingly to everyone in the world but him, there’s no way he can keep pace with enormous land mammals galloping at full speed. The komodo rhinos and riders left him in the dust minutes ago, and minutes might as well be hours on a battlefield, so he has no idea where they went and he is back to running cluelessly through a deadly cacophony. 

Zuko dodges. He weaves. Even though he rationally knows there’s no way for the Boulder to harbor a grudge from two cycles ago, every time he sees someone who looks suspiciously buff, he finds himself involuntarily yelling, “No!” at them like they’re a disobedient pet before stiff-arming past. It more or less gets him results. 

He stifles all his instincts to firebend at the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe randos who throw spears and rocks at him because it would make his resolution to join the Avatar seem pretty hollow and also chances are if he acted out in self-defense even once, that would be the moment Sokka would show up and the shaky ground the two of them are standing on would fully crumble. 

Zuko gets past a particularly gnarly skirmish and then stands on tip toe, hand shading his face, looking out on the horizon on the off-chance that Sokka has lit up a signal flare so they can find each other. Nope, zilch. He squints at the sliver of moon hanging low in the sky — which, weird, isn’t it the first of the month? — but then it’s blotted out by Appa flying down to land forty-odd yards away and holy shit, maybe he’s getting his little bit of luck after all. 

He takes a deep breath and imagines the air working like a combustion engine inside him, giving him enough energy for one more sprint, and runs towards where he last saw the air bison, clinging to a bright spark of hope that he’ll find Sokka there, too. 

* * *

“What’s going on?” Katara asks before Appa even sets all six legs on the ground. 

“We gotta stop those guys from firing on us,” Sokka answers briskly as he vaults out of the komodo rhino saddle. 

“Yeah, they’re a real pain in —” Katara stops short, remembering they’re in front of their dad. “Um, a real pain.”

Hakoda dismounts the komodo rhino with what looks like a suppressed smile on his face and doesn’t comment on the aborted phrase.

“Yeah, so can you —” Sounding a bit like an echo of his sister, Sokka pauses mid-sentence. He could have sworn he heard someone yell his name, but all the people who usually holler at him are right there and Toph’s busy fighting, he’s pretty sure — no way, no way is he this dumb, he’s a _prince_ , for Kyoshi’s sake, who has managed to stay alive for _sixteen_ years, which surely speaks to _some_ level of brain power —

But Zuko, it seems, exists to fail even Sokka’s lowest expectations because there he is, dripping with sweat like he just finished a marathon, headed their way and calling out Sokka’s name with the earnestness of someone who saw a stranger drop their wallet and is trying to get them to stop so they can return it. 

There’s no world, corporeal or astral, in which Sokka’s letting Zuko interact with his family. He doesn’t have time to come up with an elegant plan to distract them, so —

“Look over there!” Sokka shouts, pointing in the exact opposite direction of the approaching firebender. Spirits bless them, Katara and Hakoda both look and then turn back, confused since, of course, there’s nothing there. Sokka dashes over and drags Katara off Appa and (oh, he feels slimy about the fact that he knows exactly what to say here and he will put in some real self-hatred hours about it later) goes, “Aang! He needs help!”

Raw panic crosses Katara’s face. “But he’s supposed to be — Where? I don’t see him!”

“There!” Sokka insists, pointing away from Zuko. “Go, go, go!”

Katara sprints in the direction Sokka’s pointing, and Hakoda follows falteringly behind. The second their backs are turned, Sokka swivels to face Zuko, who jogs up, panting. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” Sokka hisses and it’s absolutely not a question.

“I didn’t — I didn’t want you to fly off without —” Zuko catches on to Sokka’s frustration and something suspiciously like belligerence crosses his face. “Wait, why do you get to be mad? I had to do all the legwork to get here!”

“Get on _now_ before they see you,” Sokka says, turning his back and clambering onto the air bison’s head. 

Zuko follows suit but it’s like he can’t help himself. “Why do I —” he begins to retort before slipping down Appa’s armor with a stifled ‘urgh’. Sokka very grudgingly grasps his forearm and hauls him up. “— have to hide from them?”

“Oh, I don’t know — yip yip — because they might have some _follow-up questions_ if they saw us acting like pals?” Sokka says incredulously as they take to the skies. 

“Well! Sorry you’re embarrassed to be seen with me!”

“In a very real way, I am going to throw you off Appa right now,” Sokka yells over his shoulder.

“What was the point of me coming here if you’re just going to kill me?” Zuko yells back, exasperation coming through just fine even though the wind whipping past them is very loud. 

“I was _joking_!” Sokka exclaims. “Unless…” he adds under his breath. 

“Unless??”

Sokka takes a deep breath and tries to channel Aang. “Look, can you take out that battlement as we fly past? Then we can land and, you know —.” He makes some futile gesture to mean either ‘argue’ or ‘talk’. 

Up until this point they’ve been flying upward to get out of firing range, after catching Zuko’s terse nod in his peripheral vision, Sokka leans forward and pats Appa’s forehead to indicate they should head back down. 

The descent is abrupt, to put it generously. Sokka has the prong of the air bison’s helmet to brace against but the other boy is not as lucky — Sokka hears a very undignified “Oh!” behind him, followed by the sound of someone unsuccessfully trying to find purchase on metal, and then suddenly all of Zuko’s body is pressed against Sokka’s back. 

“Um, hi,” Sokka says, his face suddenly very warm in a way he can’t really attribute to the firebender’s body heat. 

“Sorry!” Wow, his second apology from Zuko in as many days. Sokka can feel him trying to scoot back and create some space between them but it’s hard with, well, gravity. “I just — there’s nothing to —”

“No, I should have told you to sit up in the basket, sorry.” The battlement is getting closer and closer and, empty threats from earlier notwithstanding, Sokka doesn’t want Zuko to slip off when Appa banks. They’d have to start the whole day over for nothing, right? “You might as well hold on?”

“Oh. Uhhhh.” An arm practically radiating reluctance snakes around Sokka’s middle and hovers there. 

“I don’t have cooties, jerkbender!”

“I know that! I didn’t want to —”

“Like just —” Sokka presses Zuko’s arm down so it’s firmly around his rib cage. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” replies Zuko in a peculiar, strangled voice. Their target is coming up fast. “Can you, um, put your head down a little —”

Sokka ducks to the side and Zuko’s other arm extends over Sokka’s right shoulder. There’s some sparking from the firebender’s outstretched hand and then as they get within a few feet of the enormous crossbow peeking out of the tower, he unleashes a torrent of flame that melts the contraption past usability. 

“Fuck yeah!” There aren’t many times Sokka’s gotten to see firebending up close in a non-life-threatening capacity, and though he hates to admit it, it really does pop off. It will be _very_ cool when Aang learns how to do shit like that. “You wanna do another one?” Sokka asks, tossing a grin over his shoulder. He’s rewarded by the sight of Zuko looking surprised, but in some strange soft way, without the alarm Sokka is realizing underlies so many of Zuko’s reactions. 

“Sure, I can — we can do another.”

“Sweet! Switch your —.” Sokka nods down towards the arm wrapped around his middle and with gentle knee pressure guides Appa to fly a figure eight from the battlement they’ve just taken out to the next one down the wall. As they loop around their next target, Sokka puts his head down so Zuko can aim and feels Zuko’s left arm slip from around him and be replaced by his right. It’s like they’re suddenly a well-oiled machine, and it’s such a gratifying feeling that Sokka can’t help but give the arm hugging him a little squeeze. 

Zuko doesn’t squeeze back but he does unleash an absolutely blistering fireblast at this battlement’s crossbow, and that’s more important, so Sokka tries not to take the lack of response personally. 

Terrified by what they probably reckon is bafflingly vicious friendly fire, the Fire Nation soldiers abandon their melted-down crossbow and rush out the building and into the clifftop brush. Sokka gives it a minute to make sure they’re not coming back before guiding Appa to land beside the now-empty battlement. The second they come to a stop, Zuko lets go of Sokka and slides down to the ground. Well, it’s hard not to take _that_ a little personally. 

“That was pretty sick,” Sokka offers as he much more carefully climbs down Appa. He glances over to try to get a read on the firebender and sees that he has gone round the front of the air bison and is looking rather intently in the creature’s eyes. Appa gently butts his forehead against the firebender, eliciting a small laugh from the boy, before snuffling at the drawstring bag on his hip. 

“I really thought it was a fluke,” Sokka says, a little louder, and this time Zuko looks up. Sokka tips his head at Appa. “Him liking you.” 

“Yeah, well.” Zuko takes a banged up-looking, round, yellow-green fruit out of his bag and a little paring knife. “I’m cheating.” He deftly cuts a slice and offers it on the flat of his palm to Appa. The air bison gives only the most cursory sniff before scarfing it down happily.

“Is that a nashi?” Sokka asks, as Zuko cuts another bite for Appa. “Aang mentioned them before — I think the Air Nomads used to grow them? — but I haven’t seen them anywhere.”

“The season just started, so,” Zuko replies, head down, seemingly focused on cutting. Then suddenly, he looks up. “Oh! Do you — do you want some? I kind of messed it up getting it here but…”

Sokka’s instinct is to make a joke like ‘As long as it’s not poisoned!’ but there’s something tenuous in the air that he doesn’t want to spoil. He just gives a little shrug and nods. 

Zuko bites his lip absentmindedly as he tries to carve a generous section from the least bruised part of the pear. The resulting hunk isn’t pretty, but it looks appetizing enough that it makes Sokka’s stomach rumble audibly. They both laugh — Sokka a little self-consciously, Zuko’s right eye bright with amusement. 

“Thanks,” Sokka says, taking the offered piece. Spirits, now he’s nervous, trying this fruit he’s never had before with the other boy watching. What if he hates it? Should he bother being polite? It shouldn’t matter, right? He takes a generous bite in what he hopes isn’t a totally transparent attempt at bravado. Okay, whew, it’s not spicy — he knew it probably wouldn’t be but honestly, you never know with Fire Nation food — instead, it’s crisp and sweet and kind of flowery in a nice way. 

“Okay, the reviews are in,” Sokka announces, after chewing with his Wang Fire serious thinking face on for a moment. 

Zuko’s eyebrow raises. 

Sokka gives him two big thumbs up. 

“Glad we’ve got your seal of approval,” Zuko tosses off wryly, but it doesn’t seem insincere. He looks back down and starts fiddling with the knife, boring out bruises in the pear that surely aren’t that big a deal.

“Now not to discount the importance of snacking time, but we should probably get to —”

“I’m sorry —”” Zuko says abruptly, not looking up. 

Sokka doesn’t know the firebender’s face well enough to know whether there’s anger or determination set on it, but he can hear the ‘but’ that’s about to come, the ‘I don’t think this is a good idea, us working together’, and the thought of having to go back to doing these loops alone is so terrible, it yawns like a chasm in front of him and Sokka would do anything not to look into it, anything not to lose his partner in this experience, even if that partner is this incomprehensible person who he is supposed to hate but doesn’t, and so he starts to interrupt with “Hey, no, come on, we can — I know this sucks but like —”

“What?”

Well, Sokka can recognize _that_ look as pure, uncut bafflement. “Um, I’m just saying we shouldn’t give up on this —” He gestures back and forth between them. “— prematurely, just because we don’t —”

“What are you talking about? I am trying to apologize!” Zuko exclaims. He rubs at his unscarred eye, as if he’s trying to dispel his own frustration. “I’m not very good at this,” he adds in a small voice. 

“Oh.” Sokka does a lot of rapid processing, then looks at him curiously. “...For which thing?”

“Do you want an itemized — no, sorry, shit. Sorry. Um.” Zuko takes a breath in a practiced manner and it makes Sokka wonder offhandedly who taught him that. “I mean, in order of, uh, most recent…” (He’s nervous, Sokka realizes, and the Katara part of his brain is very gratified by this.) “I’m sorry I let you get killed by that guard. And by Azula, um, that one time. But.” He gives another big inhale and exhale that Sokka suspects is just a few degrees shy of starting a fire and then seems to shift into a more formal mode. “I apologize for chasing the Avatar and attempting to kidnap him. For kidnapping your sister that one time, um. For fighting you and everyone, I guess, for attacking the Southern Water Tribe, for Kyoshi Island… There’s probably other stuff…”

“Wow, it sounds really bad when you put it all together like that,” Sokka deadpans.

Zuko’s brow furrows, but he continues: “Oh, yeah, um. Sending that Fire Nation assassin after you — that was really fucked up, I shouldn’t —”

“That was you? That guy _blows_! And I think he might still be after us, so you’re gonna have to help us deal with him after —.” Sokka makes a gesture to mean ‘after this loop stuff gets resolved’. 

There’s a beat of them looking at each other and it’s clear that Zuko’s steeling himself for something but Sokka’s not sure what. Finally, Zuko loses the game of chicken and asks, “So do you accept the apology?”

“Oh! Do you guys like formally —? Uh.” Sokka shakes his head absentmindedly and searches his feelings. They’re maybe the most muddled they’ve ever been, which is really saying something. He wishes his dad was here to guide him. It feels important not to rush a response, not to say anything but what’s honest. Which is, you know, hard. “I… Thank you. For, um, saying it all, I guess?” He laughs awkwardly. “I can’t really accept — I mean, I can’t speak for anyone but me, you know. But, uh, I appreciate — appreciated it. And… Well, I guess we, um, the Southern Water Tribe — it’s like, ‘The measure of apology is the action you take after’? Is what Gran Gran always said. Which — I’m not being very clear, am I?”

Zuko sort of squints at him. 

“This is hard!” Sokka says with another weak chuckle, just to break the tension. “It’s like I’m afraid I’m going to mess it up.”

“Well, there’s no way you can mess things up as bad as I have,” Zuko says with a tentative huff of a laugh. 

They smile the smile of people building something fragile together at each other. 

“I guess…” Sokka looks up at the sky like it has any answers but it stays quiet. He looks back at Zuko. “Thank you for your apology. We can, uh —” He can’t resist doing finger zaps here. “— work towards forgiveness? As we figure this shit out. And like as long as you don’t, um, switch back sides.” Gosh, this relentless earnestness is exhausting but he wants to honor the bigness of what Zuko has offered him. _Say something true_ . “I’m glad you said all that, though. And I’m glad you’re — that I’m not doing this alone.” 

Sokka could be imagining it but he thinks he sees Zuko’s shoulders go down a hair. Feels his own relax. “So whaddaya say we get cracking on a plan?”

* * *

They’re planning. 

Well, really Sokka’s planning and Zuko is trying to be a good sounding board. It’s kind of hard to follow sometimes — the Water Tribe boy has pinged from whether they could maybe use hawks to communicate in the future (“Well, I —” “Wait, no, nevermind, we’d have to retrain them every day and we definitely don’t have that extra hour in our time table.”) to whether there are any not totally depressing rooms in the Fire Nation royal palace (“Uhhh, it depends on your tastes?” “So what I’m hearing is ‘no.’”) to the location of all the entrances and rooms in the bunker beneath the palace (Zuko’s described the layout to the best of his ability and Sokka is now mapping everything out in the dirt in an attempt to memorize it.) in the last eight minutes alone and Zuko has to work to keep himself from zoning out because he knows if his attention falters for more than three seconds, he’ll come back and be totally lost. 

He feels — well, too much, like always. Sokka seems to have totally moved on from their little foray into radical honesty but Zuko’s skin still feels flushed and tight, scalded almost, like when he was just learning to bend and caught a face full of steam coming off the teapot he was heating. (Azula had laughed at first, but then when she’d realized he was crying, she’d — well, his memory was that she had helped heal him, put some kind of salve on his cheek? (This was back when he still had feeling in it.) But that doesn’t make sense, so he’s probably mixing it up with something else. The point is, whatever she’d done, it’d been nice, and so he’s clung to it.) He just hopes his discomfort isn’t obvious. He’s tired of being so easy to read.

Oh, fuck, he got sidetracked and Sokka now seems to be talking about the relative virtues of snow leopard caribou versus komodo rhinos as mounts in battle? Zuko’s definitely not in a position to weigh in on this particular conversation but he knows the other, more important thing he needs to say.

“I think I should kill my dad.”

“I knew — I knew you weren’t listening!” Zuko recognizes the look on Sokka’s face from the many tutors he disappointed over the years. “Wait — what? Sorry, think I misheard you —”

“No, you —”

“ _Ozai_ , your dad? Your dad, _Fire Lord Ozai_? You wanna — sorry, just — your sister —” Sokka seems to think better of the intended end of his sentence and stops. 

“No, you can say it,” Zuko says gamely. “‘Your sister kicked your ass, how are you going to take out your dad?’”

“Okay, yeah. Your sister’s kicked your ass on at least one semi-recent occasion, how the fuck are you going to take out your _dad_?” Sokka’s brow scrunches up and he shakes his head. “And wait, better question — or first one — is that…. something you want to do?”

“I mean, no, I don’t _want_ to —!” Zuko finds his arms crossing, his shoulders hunching against his will. “But how else — I mean, how else do you think someone like him gets stopped.” 

Sokka looks down, uses the toe of his boot to clean up the edge of his dirt drawing. “Aang’s supposed to…” 

“Yeah, but maybe...” Zuko thinks about how young the Avatar is, what it felt like when he first really saw the wide gap of time between himself and this small person he’d been chasing to the ends of the earth. He thinks about what his own life would look like, presented on a stage for plebians and critics alike, what they’d want from the rising action. “Maybe this makes more sense.”

Sokka’s eyes narrow and he chews the inside of his lip. “Do you have a plan?”

“No,” Zuko admits. “But could you —” He could ask for Sokka’s trust but he’s too scared of being rebuffed. “— let it be my business?”

Sokka makes a little grimace and his bright blue eyes dart around like they’re tracking a million different thoughts, and Zuko wonders what it would feel like to keep up with this Water Tribe boy. Probably it’d be overwhelming. “Well,” he says after a moment, seemingly having made a decision he’s not particularly pleased with. “It’s _your_ family.”

Zuko nods curtly to close the topic. 

“Can I not ask any —? Sorry. Just to confirm. You think you can do this. Somehow. On your own terms. And if you… neutralized him, we’d meet up… where?”

“I mean, you guys made it down to the bunker at least once before, right?”

“Yeah. So I guess, you could come to the chamber where Azula hangs out after? Because I bet we’ll still be fighting her and the Dai Li no matter how long you take.” Sokka gives a self-effacing laugh.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s — you know, with our father gone, maybe she — I mean, I don’t want to jinx it but —” He catches Sokka’s eye mid-sentence and something he sees on the Water Tribe boy’s face stops him — Sokka almost looks stricken. He covers whatever it is quickly, but it’s so odd and discomfiting Zuko can’t finish the sentiment and just trails off. 

Sokka doesn’t seem to notice, just crouches down over his earthen map and traces out their respective proposed paths with a stick. After they’ve reviewed the plan to Sokka’s satisfaction (“Okay, you’re going to do...your thing, I’m going to do the invasion, Dad and Katara and I will take out the battlements — which like, we did it today so should be easy as pie — and then I’ll get the Gaang down to the evil little palace basement and we’ll fight Azula until you show up. Okay? Now repeat that back to me.” “Why??” “Because I have known you like two days and I just know you wake and immediately forget everything about your life like some kind of koi fish —” “I do not!” “Look, it doesn’t matter, just humor me and repeat it!” “Fine!!”), he stands up, brushes off his pants, goes, “Okay,” and holds out a hand.

Zuko stares at it.

Sokka stares at him. “La’s fins, put your hand out!”

Startled into obedience, Zuko extends his right arm. In the blink of an eye, Sokka’s grasped his forearm firmly and is using his free hand to gently wrap Zuko’s fingers around his own gauntleted forearm, like Zuko’s a shop mannequin who can’t get into a pose on his own. (Which — maybe he’s right. Zuko doesn’t help in any real way, just lets himself become pliable.)

They are close. Sokka’s hands are warm in a way that surprises Zuko for some reason. Sokka holds Zuko’s gaze evenly and some back part of Zuko’s brain pings that there’s no flinch or pity or preoccupation from Sokka about the scar, that he doesn’t think there ever has been. 

“So this is a Water Tribe thing,” Sokka says quietly, glancing at their clasped arms. “North _and_ South. Um, mostly a greeting, especially among warriors. But it can also be like a promise. Or an agreement? And it just felt important to — before we split up, to do this, to have some kind of ‘Go team!’ You know?”

Zuko permits himself the smallest smile and nods. “Go team.” 

Sokka gives his forearm one shake and they let go of each other and it’s strange but having to step away feels just a little bit like a loss.

Without meaning to, Zuko says, “Thank you. For sharing that.”

“Yeah!” Sokka’s cheeks look a little darker than usual but maybe it's just a shadow falling across his face. “Yeah, of course, bud. It’s no big! Just, you know, hope you kill it! Well, I mean —”

Zuko laughs without hesitation. “Oh, I know what you mean. Will do.”

Sokka chuckles and rubs the back of his head a little sheepishly. “So, ready to call it?”

Zuko’s stomach drops. Somehow he’d allowed himself to forget for a moment the particular agonies of their situation. “Oh… yeah. Do you wanna —”

“Hey, bozo!” Sokka runs up to the edge of the cliff and starts jumping up and down, waving his arms at the battlement on the other side of the crevasse. “C’mon, don’t you wanna shoot me? Or are you chicken??”

It’s totally preposterous and yet Zuko’s smiling. “Oh, you criticized _me_ for not having a plan?”

Sokka’s unfazed. His jumping jacks continue apace. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You talk a big game! You gonna help me?”

There’s a moment where Zuko thinks about things like dignity and his painstaking, cheerless, cruel — he’s still learning to call it cruel — upbringing and thinks, _No, I shouldn’t_ . But then he thinks about those structures and expectations in tatters, he thinks about his uncle’s easy smile, how he’s resented it and longed to have it for himself, and he thinks, _What’s ‘shouldn’t’ in this economy?_

Zuko joins the Water Tribe boy on the cliff’s edge. He doesn’t hop around, but he waves his arms and he yells and when a crossbolt finally fires in their direction, he grabs Sokka’s wrist right before impact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please sir those are my emotional support paraphrased pride and prejudice and the winter’s tale quotes!!! 
> 
> finger zaps as a substitute for finger guns is stolen from a post by tumblr user bleekay, whose swt zukka art i am very much obsessed with. i’m so grateful!!
> 
> thank you to every reader for your patience with this update, thank you to caroline for always bullying me the perfect amount, thank you every single person who comments, y’all are all angels on this bitch of an earth 
> 
> i remain a gremlin (who fervently believes texas can go blue if not during this election, then in my lifetime) whom you can find on tumblr @ gideongriddle


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